Boston City Scenes

We're been away, so I've fallen in reading blogs, but will be catching up shortly. We've been to Boston, RI and VT. I'll be posting about where and what we've been doing. 

We were in Boston recently and had never before visited the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. The library opened in 1852 as the first free, publicly-supported municipal library in America and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Best of all, there's no admission charge to tour the library and view the artwork within.

The Central Library in Copley Square is opposite Trinity Church (below) founded in 1734. 

The library contains over 19 million volumes and electronic resources, making it the second-largest public library in the U.S. behind the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

It’s been called one of the five most important libraries in the U.S. Others are the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the university libraries of Harvard and Yale.

The Library has a collection of over 23.7 million items, making it one of the largest municipal public library systems in the U.S.

The massive stone lions were commissioned by veterans of the 20th Massachusetts (called the Harvard regiment because recruits had graduated or been at the school at the time of the Civil War) and the 2nd Massachusetts regiments. The stonework was left unpolished at the veterans request. The sculptures watch library users and tourists pass between them. Their large paws curl across the edge of the bases, filled with the names of the battles fought by the 2nd and the 20th Massachusetts: Ball's Bluff, Antietam, and Gettysburg.

The library has many art treasures including a sequence of mural decoration, Triumph of Religion, executed between 1895 and 1916 by artist John Singer Sargent.

Boston's Old City Hall was home to its city council from 1865 to 1969. It was one of the first buildings in the French Second Empire style built in the U.S.

The Second Empire style was used extensively in Boston and for many public buildings in Washington, D.C., and for city halls in Providence, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

When a new Boston City Hall opened in 1969, Old City Hall was converted to other uses, an early example of adaptive reuse. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1970. Today, it houses various businesses, organizations, and a restaurant.

We had an impressive view of this building from our hotel window at twilight.