Category: History

When the future was... utopian

1/25/2015

Lately, we've been reading about all sorts of building (and other structures) being repurposed as libraries. There's the vacant WalMart in McAllen, Texas that was transformed into a massive public library that, in fact, won the 2012 Library Interior Design competition. And the big-box supermarket that morphed into the Eden Prairie branch of the Hennepin County (MN) library system. Or an old jail in Nassau, Bahamas which now holds books instead of prisoners. Not to mention the old train cars and shipping containers that now carry the means to transport readers rather than cargo.

But what about old libraries? They don't just fade away. They, too, have a storied history of repurposing and there's not better example than the Cultural Center in downtown Chicago.

The Cultural Center was built back in the day when public buildings were monuments to the glory of living and testaments to the continuing progress that mankind was making in pulling itself up from the swamps of ignorance and venality.

The White City...

It was the heyday of neoclassical architecture. Chicago had just hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, a monumental undertaking in which Daniel Burnham and Frederic Olmsted transformed a 600 acre marsh into a glorious utopian dreamland where grand edifices emboldened with elegant fluted columns and capped with stately domes rose above a stunningly crafted landscape and were reflected in man-made pools and the natural wonder just to the east, Lake Michigan. For an informative and entertaining account of this massive achievement, read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (serial killers, urban planning and architecture: the nexus).

World's Columbian Exposition (courtesy blueprintchicago.org)

In 1891, Chicago actually had the largest library system in the country, possessing well over 120,000 volumes. These volumes had been essentially homeless, moving around from one temporary location to the next. Finally, the Library Board decided that it needed a permanent residence and after some wrangling over the location (the state legislature had already given part of the preferred site to a Civil War veterans organization), it was decided that the new building would serve both a central library and as a Memorial Hall to the Grand Army of the Republic, honoring the Northern soldiers who had fought in the Civil War. The instructions that the board gave to all the architects who bid on the design project were simple: the building should "convey to the beholder the idea that the building would be an enduring monument worthy of a great and public spirited city."

Easy- peasy...

Shepley Rutan and Coolidge won the bid with a design that continued along the White City's neoclassical path, featuring Greek columns, Roman arches, and not one, but two domes.

Surprise!

The People's Palace...

Construction was completed and the library opened in October of 1987. In the first week, thousands of citizens ogled its limestone and granite exterior before they passed through its massive doorways. Their necks strained and eyes blinked as they marveled at the amazingly beautiful stained glass domes. Did they feel light of foot as they traipsed up and down its glisteningly white marble stairways and shimmering halls embedded with mother-of-pearl and colored glass mosaics?

Here was, indeed, a place that could transport one from where he or she was... to someplace else... a marvelous place... a palace of learning and culture.

The Tiffany dome in Preston Bradley Hall (courtesy chicagoarchitecture.org)

No, black and white would not do it justice.

Now, as time passed, while the incredible beauty of the building lingered, the mechanical, electrical and communication systems become obsolete and for awhile, it seemed that building would go the way of the old Chicago Board of Trade and be demolished. Then Mayor Richard the First formed a committee to consider the building's fate. Eleanor Daley, known around town as "Sis," made a comment in public that she thought all the beautiful, old buildings should be saved and restored. Signed, sealed, delivered... the Chicago Public Library soon achieved landmark status in both the National Register of Historic Places and the Chicago Landmarks registry.

Preston Bradley Hall

Sanctuary...

I have a personal connection to this hallowed place. When I was a callow young woman, just out of college, my first job was at a large advertising agency which shall remain anonymous. Now shortly into my career as a "Mad Man," ("Mad Woman?"), I came to my senses and realized that the 24/7/365 business of selling things was not for me. (And there was no creative director who looked like Don Draper.) So I quit. But since I was still living at home and my decision to abandon this excellent position to do....what?.... would have been severely frowned on by the parentals, I made no mention of it. Instead, I would get dressed in the morning and ride the bus down to the Loop as usual and hang out... you guessed it, at the library! And conduct my job search... as so many other people have done and continue to do... at their public libraries, places rich in resources for when one faces this type of traumatic life event. Only I got to do so under a sweeping ceiling of mosaics with the names of some of the greatest writers in history. Surrounded by walls inscribed with the deep thoughts of the greatest thinkers... Sanctuary... inspiration... another place, another library that would help me get from where I was to where I wanted to be...

New Life...

After the new Chicago Public Library, named after Mayor Harold Washington, opened in 1991, the city repurposed the old library into the Cultural Center, thanks to the vision of Lois Weisberg, the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The building was renovated and restored and now features an art exhibition space named for Congressman Sidney Yates, who championed the cause and obtained federal funding for improvements, several small theaters and galleries, the previously mentioned Preston Bradley Hall, which features frequent musical performances and the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial concerts, as well as the Museum of Broadcast Communications. It's also apparently a hotspot for wedding ceremonies...

If you've never been, you should consider a pilgrimage to the building called The People's Palace. It's a place out of time, when the future was utopian and men subscribed to the notion of City Beautiful and that we should make no "little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood..."

You can read more about the Chicago Cultural Center and plan your visit here.

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

0 Comments

The Mansueto Library and the Death of Serendipity... or Ahead to the Past

8/2/2014

2 Comments

Time was, you couldn't just stroll into a library, walk up to a shelf, close your eyes (or leave them open, if you prefer) and pick out a book to read. And that time is now... Days of Future Past. Or would it be Days of Past Future?

Well, to explain my befuddlement, please allow me to digress for a brief history of libraries...

In the beginning...

Cuneiform (British Museum)

...there was chaos. Things... information... knowledge was scattered everywhere... and no one could find anything they needed... when they needed it. And it was said by someone... although we don't know who... "let there be a semblance of order." And there was a library.

The earliest libraries were housed in the temples of Sumer, a region of city-states in Mesopotamia. They housed:

commercial accounts (who sold how many goats to whom and at what price);
math and grammar lessons for young scribes (No, my young scribawan, the correct usage is I couldn't care less, not I could care less);
medical and astrological treatises; and
collections of hymns, prayers and incantations.

All of these were recorded on clay tablets in a form of writing called cuneiform. And no doubt, Marian the Sumerian Librarian kept those stacks of tablets neatly edged and in perfect order. Of course, back in the day, this was easy to do because the stacks (as such) were closed, meaning that they and the material they held were only accessible by library staff (in this case, the temple scribes).

Temple at Edfu (Ancient-Egypt.org)

And someone said... although we don't know who... "go forth and multiply... gather up all the information and knowledge and have dominion over it... sort it... and organize it... and make sense of it... so that you might make it available for mankind so that knowledge may grow from more to more and therefore human life be enriched." And so the idea of libraries spread and grew, from the Egyptian "House of Papyrus" at Edfu (I kid you not!) to the fabulous scholarly collections of Ashurbanipal and Alexandria and the Ottoman Empire to the imperial libraries of Constantinople and Damascus to the monastic libraries of the Middle Ages to the libraries of the great universities at Oxford and Paris to the earliest "public" libraries in Europe and the United States.

If it's a temple, then I must be a Goddess...

(courtesy ancestry.com)

But even as libraries spread and developed and evolved, the notion of "library as temple" remained. It was a Temple of Knowledge of which the Librarian was a Guardian Goddess who sat at the Altar of Reference. The patron/supplicant would approach the altar seeking succor in the form of information (a tablet in Mesopotamia, a book elsewhere, once the "miracle of Mainz" occurred) Because in these early libraries, the emphasis was much more on storage and preservation rather than use. Hence, books were often chained to tables to prevent their removal by sticky-fingered patrons or kept behind bars (literally and figuratively) and only handed over reluctantly for brief periods of perusal within the confines of the temple/library.

Ranganathan and his laws

And then someone said... "Books are for use." (We actually know who said this, the rock star/ library god, S.R. Ranganathan, who didn't carry his 5 Rules down from Mount Sinai engraved on a tablet, but he still became one of the most influential philosophical figures in the history of librarianship. He also didn't conclude his pronouncement with the interjection, "Duh!") He also said that every book has its reader and every reader has his/her book. Now these truths may seem self-evident, but it wasn't always so.

So, over time and with the brilliant innovations of a few smart librarians following the Laws of Ranganathan and the organizational system of Melvil Dewey (or Library of Congress, if you're in academia) and bolstered by the monetary input of at least one capitalist with a thirst for knowledge and a taste for philanthropy of the intellectual kind, the idea of a library has evolved into being more of a market place. And the buildings and their accouterments changed to reflect that notion. Andrew Carnegie (btw, that's Car-NEG-ie, not CAR-ne-gie), who provided millions to build public libraries in towns across the United States, was also a smart businessman who kept his eyes on his pennies. To reduce operating costs in the branch libraries in his native Pittsburgh, his directors introduced the "open stack" policy, a revolutionary idea of "self-service" in which patrons could access books directly, without having to approach the Reference Altar. John Cotton Dana pursued this same policy in the Denver Public library and other systems that he administered.

Books had become far more plentiful and easier to replace; the cataloging systems were easy to use and made locating material much more straightforward for the average person. Entering the stacks was no longer like entering the Holy Sanctuary, it was like entering Books R Us or Infomart.

Would you like some Nietzsche with your Kierkegaard?

Hence the idea of library as marketplace: librarians, instead of reclining at the altar, go out and drum up business and patrons get to browse and touch the goods before committing to a purchase.

Which, of course, led to exploration and the birth of Serendipity, who, unlike Venus, did not rise up out of the ocean on a clam shell wearing only her hair. (Serendipity the word was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 and means "a fortunate happenstance" or "a pleasant surprise.") Indeed, it (or she, or he, however way you roll), as a library experience, blossomed in the midst of the freedom that patrons had to, in the words of Ranganathan, "wander among the books and lay his (or her) hands on any of them at his will and pleasure." Accompanied by Serendipity, in the course of looking for one book, a patron may find, just by chance, another even more suited to his (or her) liking. Or perhaps even two or three or an armful... Because you can't always know what you want, much less get it, unless you can take a look around. (And yes, I know that with the sophistication of our online PAC systems, you can "virtually" wander a shelf, but it's not quite the same thing, now, is it? And don't call me a Luddite. I love technology, I am comfortable with it, I teach it, I respect it, blah, blah, blah...)

Serendipity deepens the joy of using a library (there's one of those feeling words again) for patrons of all ages, from the pre-schooler stumbling upon Ruby and Max, those irrepressible bunnies created by Rosemary Wells, while on the hunt for the latest Pigeon book by Mo Willems to the tween who finds the fantasies of Emily Rodda while picking out the sequel to Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief to the adult who might walk into a library looking for Gustave Flaubert's portrait of a bad marriage and went home carrying Gillian Flynn's as well. And it happens all the time in the nonfiction section as well. You stride purposefully down to the 551s section for books about tornadoes, only to have your eyes drawn to the stunning geode on a cover in 540s. And, of course, you just have to stop and peruse. (Or at least I do!)

Marian the robot librarian?

So, besides being a rather simplistic origin story of libraries, what exactly is this all about?

The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, the self-proclaimed "library of the future," that's what.

The Mansueto Library, opened in 2011, is the newest library on the University of Chicago campus. It sits just to the west of old Regenstein, like a sparkling, many-faceted, oval-cut diamond tossed down next to a chunk of concrete. The Mansuetos, both alumni, provided a cool $25 million for its construction. Designed by Chicago architectural icon, Helmut Jahn, the library, constructed in the shape of an ellipse, is a stunning physical space and an engineering marvel, consisting of an 8,000 square foot "Grand Reading Room," a state-of-the-art preservation and digitization lab, and an underground Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) (the "stacks") with the capacity to hold 3.5 million volumes (or volume equivalents, as they put it).

Rather than shelves, the books are stored in mausoleum-like bins and metal shelf units which are attached to 50-foot-tall storage racks.

Patrons search for and request materials in the library's online catalog. A robotic crane swoops along a track, gathers up the correct bins where the books are located and shoots them up to the main floor circulation desk where patrons can check out the material. The whole process takes about 5 minutes or so.

A particularly unique feature about the ASRS is that the material is shelved by size, rather than library classification. Poor old Melvil is probably rolling over in his grave, because this is the way books were often stored before he came up with his classification system. Ah, progress...

The portal...

Under the Dome...

You have to enter the Mansueto through Regenstein for "security reasons." You do so by passing through a connecting steel and glass bridge with sliding doors that exude a Star Trekian vibe. You emerge into The Grand Reading Room, which is very high-end IKEA: yards and yards of blonde white oak, plenty of stainless steel, long tables, shorter tables, all enclosed by an aluminum-framed glass dome.

The day we visited, the place hummed. Literally. Twice as loud as old Reg ever did. And instead of seeming light-filled and airy, the dome felt oppressive. I felt like I was a firefly trapped under a jar: I could see the enticing natural world (that lovely green grass, those well-tended shrubs) surrounding me, but I just couldn't get to it, no matter how far I crawled. (Shades of Stephen King with some Kafka thrown in...) I imagine in the winter, particularly this past winter with its 80 inches of snow, the effect is igloo-like, which might be kind of cool. Until claustrophobia takes hold.

But the worst aspect for me, the library adventuress, was the absolute lack of serendipity in that ultra-modern space. Yes, I understand the rationale.

Preservation
Closed vs. Open Shelving:
A closed automated shelving system allows library materials to be stored at temperature and humidity conditions (60 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity) that are ideally suited for their preservation but could not be achieved in open spaces where patrons browse and retrieve materials.

And I appreciate the efficiency. And I understand the "electronic open stacks" of digital image-based texts. Like I said, don't call me a Luddite. That's knee-jerk.

It's just that... as a library wanderer, in a place where "not all those who wander are lost," I feel the loss of serendipity.

Closed stacks = no wandering. No wandering = a limit on the possibility of every book finding its reader and every reader finding her book.

That seems kind of like ancient history to me.

Contemplating whether to scale the dome, as others have apparently done (perhaps U of C will be adding shrubbery with thorns to the landscaping)

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

Well, it's not a music video...but it's kind cool to get to go behind the scenes.

2 Comments

When the future was... utopian

The White City...

The People's Palace...

Sanctuary...

New Life...

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

The Mansueto Library and the Death of Serendipity... or Ahead to the Past

In the beginning...

If it's a temple, then I must be a Goddess...

Would you like some Nietzsche with your Kierkegaard?

Marian the robot librarian?

Under the Dome...

There's always another adventure waiting on a higher shelf...

Well, it's not a music video...but it's kind cool to get to go behind the scenes.

Author

Archives

Categories