284 CHARLES AMMI CUTLER 



ry's stock of books and number of readers. Some have been 

 built too small even for the books that the library had already. 

 Even for show they have not till very lately reached much 

 success. We have not even found a characteristic style of 

 architecture. Every one knows a church, a theater, a railroad 

 station, when he sees it. One seldom knows a library if it is not 

 labeled. The ordinary library building might be taken for a 

 school, a bank, a courthouse, or a municipal building. Yet 

 the way to a style was plain. A library has one need which 

 should give rise to distinctive features. Its reading rooms, its 

 study, and its working rooms must be very light — much lighter 

 than the rooms of a dwelling house. This necessity ought to 

 show in the design. The stack must not only be light, but 

 must be lighted in a peculiar way, which alone would mark the 

 building as a library, by a series of lofty, narrow windows, 

 separated by still narrower columns or sections of wall, a 

 difficult matter to treat without bareness and monotony, yet 

 surely not beyond the capacity of the American architect. 



The library building of 1801 was in most cases one room, 

 shelved around the walls. When too many books accumu- 

 lated for the wall space, they were put into cases projecting 

 from the sides. The evolution of a century has differentiated 

 this single cell into a score of different parts, each with its own 

 function — for work, the packing, accessioning, cataloguing and 

 classifying, binding, printing, mechanics' rooms; for the per- 

 sonnel, the trustees', librarian's, staff's, janitor's rooms; for the 

 public, the cloak and hat, toilet, charging, reading, current 

 periodical reading, and standard reading rooms, and some- 

 times the dining room ; for special kinds of stock, the rooms for 

 bound periodicals, manuscripts, maps, patents, public docu- 

 ments; for special classes of users, the study, class, lecture, art 

 rooms, the photographing room (with a developing closet), the 

 music room (with a piano and deadened walls), the room for 

 the blind, and the children's room. All of these are needed in 

 the largest libraries; many of them are already to be found in 

 them; the children's room is needed everyw^here. In the 

 smaller libraries, of course, one room plays many parts. 



In the first years of the library awakening the most atten- 

 tion was paid, as was natural, to details of management — the 



