1 32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



opportunities for the designer. Aside from the benefactions of Mr. 

 Carnegie, which are in some respects the most striking event of the 

 past ten years, literally scores of small buildings have been erected by 

 private individuals and by towns. These are coming to form an archi- 

 tectural type fully as distinct as the large buildings. As a rule, of 

 late years these smaller library buildings have taken the shape of a 

 rectangular structure with a central hall, two large front rooms, a 

 delivery desk across the hall and shelves in ' stacks ' in the rear on the 

 main floor. A second story usually provides space for additional study 

 and administration rooms. A very large number of memorial libraries 

 of this general type have been erected, particularly in New England. 

 Numerous local and individual variations occur, but a building de- 

 signed to shelve some ten thousand books so as to be easily reached by 

 any visitor and to afford one attendant a fair view of the main floor 

 has become the accepted type of the small library. 



In 1893 there were but three examples of modern library build- 

 ings of a size much above the ordinary to be seen in America. These 

 were the Boston Public Library, the Library of Cornell University and 

 the Newberry Library of Chicago. All these are dignified and impos- 

 ing structures, while the Boston edifice is distinctly one of the foremost 

 public buildings of the country. No one of these buildings has ever 

 satisfied librarians as an ideal, despite their abundant merits. In the 

 past decade a round dozen structures have been reared, which undoubt- 

 edly rank as of the first order for size and cost. They are the Library 

 of Congress, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Public Libraries 

 of Chicago, Milwaukee, Providence, Newark and the District of Co- 

 lumbia, and the libraries of Columbia, Princeton, New York and Illi- 

 nois Universities, together with that of the State Historical Society 

 of Wisconsin. Each of these buildings is in itself a notable produc- 

 tion; as a group they form a striking testimony to the extent and 

 vitality of the library ' movement ' in this country. None of them is 

 without individuality. The reading room of the Library of Congress, 

 the rotunda and impressive south fagade of the Columbia Library, the 

 Hall of Fame at the rear of the New York University Library, are 

 characteristic features known to all readers of the illustrated papers. 

 The others offer even more interesting and valuable returns to the 

 student of our architecture and of library problems. The university 

 libraries and that of the Wisconsin Historical Society in particular 

 will repay the most careful examination. 



It has been a decade of building, and the end is not yet. The New 

 York Public Library's building now in process of erection is but the 

 largest of scores either planned or under way. For most of this ex- 

 pansion Mr. Carnegie is responsible. There seems to be no limit to 

 his generosity, and with very few exceptions, the money he has given 



