Last summer I tried to visit every local library that I could get to by bicycle. It was an excuse to exercise, but I had also just read “The Library Book” by Susan Orlean (2018). It’s a history of the Los Angeles Public Library, and a description of what an amazing resource it is for the city. It’s a genuine Third Place, a separate space besides home and work. A huge range of people use it, especially those who are new to the country. Did all this apply to suburban Boston libraries too?

I managed to get to ten local libraries, but still have a few to go. You can’t go more than a mile away from one around here, unless you’re in the golf course and parks districts. None of these are as grand as the Riordan Building of the LA Central Library, although the Boston Central Library certainly is.

They come in a wide range of sizes and styles, but I can report that they all stress resources for immigrants, teens, and kids. They all now have a lot more to offer than books, including items for loan (the cutely named “Library of Things”), PC stations along with scanners and printers, and scads of DVDs, just as you can no longer buy or play them. They all have a common catalog called the Minuteman Library Network, and so can get titles from anywhere in eastern Massachusetts.

The saddest one I visited was in Belmont MA, and that’s because they had to demolish it. The old library was a low, dull Federalist structure from 1965 that was outgrown by 2000 and falling apart by the 2020s. They knocked it down in Dec ’23 and nothing has yet gone up in its place. They moved some of the holdings to a senior center a half mile away, but no one was there. They hope to have a new building in place by the end of 2025, but it’s not looking promising. The renders for it look dull too.

That ties into the main problem that I saw with most of these buildings – they have striking original structures coupled with boring modern extensions. The worst was the main Cambridge Library:

The original building is in the style of H. H. Richardson (1838-1886), and you see it all over New England. It struck a chord in the heart of stolid 19th century Yankees. It’s not the soaring, airy Gothic of medieval cathedrals. That would be too frivolous for them, and too Catholic. It’s also not the plain white clapboard of Puritan churches. That looks too cheap. They had money by then, and Italian stone mason talent. This style is solid and lasting. It can withstand whatever the world throws at it. Yet it also gets floral capitals and even gargoyles. The burghers of Cambridge wanted a Temple of Knowledge, and were willing to spend to show how much they valued it.

The new building, well, not so much. It could be an office for some tech-ish business like pharma. It looks flimsy and transient. The glass curtain walls are only 15 years old, and not looking that good. Notice that it doesn’t even have steps. For the old building, you literally ascended to enter it, and here the entrance is on the flats with the lawn. That does make ADA compliance easier. All that glass actually makes it hard to read since it lets in direct sunlight. Maybe the translucent awnings help, but they’ll get filthy over time. There is a modernist architecture philosophy that thinks that glass walls display the open and democratic qualities that public institutions should embody, but because they also happen to be cheap, they look that way. At least it’s not the fetish for raw concrete that they inflicted on us in the 60s and 70s.

Modern librarians probably aren’t that comfortable anyway with the cult of books. It smacks too much of worshiping dead white men. They may secretly be biblio-maniacs, as I am, but have to declare that the library is about Information and Universal Access, not dead trees and elite education. Buildings that actually look nice are classist and don’t show their solidarity with the People.

Another thing that struck me in visiting all these places is how they really are the memory of their towns. Here for instance is a WPA mural of the purchase of the land for the town of Winchester from the Squaw Sachem:

They all have portraits of distinguished citizens, works by local artists, and a local history room. Those are full of volumes like town meeting records for the last 150 years, and lists of residents who fought in the country’s many wars. The most impressive such artifact is the Bedford Flag:

This is an actual banner carried in the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the first of the American Revolution. It’s the oldest flag in the country, made in the 1730s of painted silk. The motto is Vince Aut Morire, Win Or Die. The design was popular in the English Civil War of a hundred years earlier, and shows the mighty arm of God on one’s side. This is as heavy metal as flags get! The librarian who showed it to me said that a previous visitor had it tattooed on his arm. The three silver dots distinguish this particular flag from similar ones of other regiments. It was restored in the 2000s and is now kept in a climate-controlled room. Not bad for a town of only 14,000!

The most gratifying thing, though, was to see how busy all of these libraries were. All the computer workstations tended to be in use, and the children’s areas were full of kids. There appear to be many events held in each per week. They are always short of funding, and frequently scapegoats for the political crisis of the moment, but they are also wonderful resources for their communities.