SPIRIT OF PLANNING
Every new library building should be thoroughly planned with a view to its class, scope, size, funds, site, environment, experience, and cost of administration. True economy begins with a good plan. Not only present cost but future annual costs depend on it.
The main thing in beginning to plan, even in the first consideration of building, is to set your ideal high. If your funds are not yet provided do not take it for granted that they will be meagre. Study the scope of your library, look hopefully into its future. What work should it do now; what growth should it get in the next twenty-five years? What size and area are needed to meet your utmost possibilities in that time? Consider first only the essentials—they will be costly enough. When you have made careful calculation of actual needs (and nothing else) ask your donor, town or institution for what would cover them. Do not at first include expensive material or ornament. If the body that is to pay requires elegance, calculate cost of this and present it as a separate question.
Set your ideal of utility high, and ask enough to cover it. If you cannot get it, then and not till then will be time to decide what to surrender.
If the amount to be spent is already fixed, still study ideals first. Can we get all the requisites for this library within that sum? If it is evidently impossible; if building thus would stifle usefulness or stunt growth, ask for more. But if you cannot get it, or if you think the appropriation can be made to cover the work, the ideal to aim at is to pack into the building ample accommodation for every function you will need to cover.
Above all, make these calculations ahead. When the sum is finally fixed, resolve to plan so carefully that the final cost will come within the appropriation. Like a note to pay, this obligation is peremptory.
“The main ideas are, compact stowing to save space, and short distances to save time.”—Winsor.[55]
This axiom written a generation ago would serve to head this chapter now. Also this, “In building, as in management, the wants of the great masses of the public must be kept constantly in view.”—Poole.[56]
“The evolution of a design is not such a simple matter that the finished idea can be produced in a short time, but it must depend on a gradual evolution, based upon a thorough study of the local conditions.”—Patton.[57]
“A building can be made both beautiful from the architect’s standpoint and useful from that of its occupant, by constant consultation between them, by comparison of views at every point, and by intelligent compromise whenever this is found to be necessary.”—Bostwick.[58]
Taste, Tact, Thrift, Thoroughness
The spirit of planning is summarized in the apothegm on the frontispiece of this volume.
Tastefully. Although Vitruvius reckons beauty third and last among the requisites of building, I can put taste first, because good taste covers both beauty and use and should be the prevailing characteristic of every detail of a library building.
Tactfully. Webster defines tactful as a discerning sense of what is right, proper, or judicious, and this sense applied to the details of library planning would certainly tend to perfection.
Thriftily. “Economical management” should be the keynote embodied in every detail of library building.
Thoroughly. This should be the pervading and controlling spirit. Plan to the very end; aim for the very best; slight no least detail.
This is so essential to proper planning that it deserves a separate chapter. To lack of thoroughness on the part of building committees, much of the disappointing character of existing buildings is due. They choose an architect directly or by competition, and give him inadequate guidance in his task.
An architect knows much, especially where to look for knowledge, but it is too much to expect him to master in a month or a year, together with a score of other investigations, the intricacies of a complex and rapidly developing science in which only a few librarians are expert after a lifetime of study and practice.
The committees, not experts themselves, have not secured a library expert to formulate their problems thoroughly. Perhaps they have delegated to their own librarian a branch of library science which he does not know by experience, and cannot be expected to learn in a short time by study; especially as his normal duties of running the library fully fill all his waking hours, and part of his dreams. It is not so much a lack of thoroughness on the part of the committee as an entire lack of comprehension of how much there is to be thorough about.
Use Every Inch of Space. Begin at the foundation and study every detail. Study every entrance, passage, stairway, room, floor, piece of furniture, stretch of shelving, up to the roof; sketch as you go, sketch not loosely but to scale. Fit your parts together; leave no waste space, no dark corner unutilized. Measure zealously and save every inch of length, breadth and height; every useless cubic inch costs money and wastes room. Plan a closet under every open staircase. Watch especially the height of every story and every room. Do not allow any foot of height not imperatively demanded for light or ventilation. Allow nothing for mere architectural effect. Search even attic and ceiling to utilize unutilized corners. Do not blame the architect, blame yourself, the library expert, for any waste of space and money.
Economy Paramount
In public buildings, the duty of rigid economy is clear,—economy in cost, economy in space, provision for economy in administration. Even with a lavish donor, his generosity should be guarded by economy, especially if he does not endow his institution lavishly enough to provide for upkeep and efficient management. This is an age of extravagance, not only the extravagance of luxury, but that of necessity. With invention and improved comforts of living, the luxuries of our fathers have become the necessities of our children. This is just as true of libraries as of households. Even with larger incomes than our fathers, we have to be economical to live in health and comfort. With libraries and with families as their income increases their wants increase—they never have enough. Especially is forethought needed in building a larger house. Do not spend too much on it; do not build it beyond your means. But get everything into it you can reasonably afford to use. So with a library building. If you have a given sum to spend, plan very carefully to get all possible space and convenience for the cost. If you are planning to ask for an appropriation or a gift, plan carefully to ask for no more than you actually need;—your needs are sure to require as much as you can afford. The tendency to extravagance is even more marked in public buildings than in private life. Except in the case of rich men who feel the increased burden of taxation, the average citizen is apt to vote money for schools and libraries and city halls, without careful enough inquiry into details and with rather a liking for show. But every real friend of libraries ought to oppose extravagance as watchfully as he would oppose parsimony, and plan so that a given amount of money will do the most good. Use and not show should be his motto. Treat the library liberally, but do not allow the library building to take so much as to cramp the other good work of the community.
“One of the most difficult features of the problem is adapting the views of librarian and board to the cost limit.”—Hamlin.[59]
“Plan well within your limit; extra wants will come up as you progress.”—Eastman.
Cost of Running
Not only first cost but future annual cost of administration, depends upon careful planning of the building. Care and repairs of expensive material and ornament; cleaning, heating and lighting useless floor space or height; inconvenience in use; separation of departments, will require more attendants and more money, with worse service to the public.
“Extravagance in library building is not so often found in lavish ornament as in that unfortunate arrangement of departments which requires three attendants to do the work of one or two.”—Eastman.[60]
“The salary of an extra attendant represents the interest on a sum which would go far to make the arrangement of the parts of the building what it should be.”—Fletcher.[61]
Duff-Brown[62] calculates that lighting, heating, repairs and cleaning cost from 13 to 16 per cent of the annual appropriation for a library. This percentage can be kept to its lowest limit by good planning, or increased by bad planning.
“A plan most economical in cost of building is often most economical in cost of working.”—Champneys.[63]
“A simple plan is better and more economical.”—Eastman.[64]
Not only economy of construction but economy of administration is imperatively demanded.
The Worst Extravagances
The very worst possible waste in building a library is doubtless unduly expensive material and unnecessary ornament. These items often mount up into tens and even hundreds of thousands. They are worse than mere waste, they are positive detriments.
The next worst is perhaps architectural competitions, which are spoken of at length elsewhere.[65] They are sure to cost a deal: payment for an advisory architect, payment of prizes, payment of the jury. Here again there is more than waste, there is delay, a false start, deliberate care to put exterior before interior.
The third common extravagance is parsimony in experts’ fees. Champneys[66] in speaking of architects’ errors, says that “to this fact must be attributed the suggestion that librarians should dispense with the services of architects, and design their buildings for themselves.” This suggestion may have been made in England, but never in America, even in acute periods of despair over the trend of building. No American librarian, no building committee, would think of dispensing with an architect, though they might try to economize by getting a cheap one.
But it is just as wasteful to cheapen your library adviser as your architect. Because it has a librarian already, or because the architect chosen is willing to tackle the job without expert advice (perhaps more readily because he resents advice), or because it is inclined to contemn and resent advice itself, the committee often commits willful extravagance at the outset, saving at the spigot to waste at the bung, by going poorly equipped into a serious task.
Economy of Expert Advice
But “penny wise is pound foolish.” Saving first cost is not always true economy. It would be foolish indeed to save on architect’s fees. For a little one-room wooden building, to be sure, a local carpenter might do, under the supervision of a clever librarian or a practical trustee. But as soon as the building gets complex, get an architect. His fees will save enough in convenience, in comfort, in grace, in beauty, in actual money outgo to contractors, to prove themselves the best economy. Just so, as the problem gets still larger and more complex, get the advice of an expert librarian to help present it to the architect. He will more than earn his fees by keeping down useless waste of space; by pointing out how to economize in running expenses; by aiding the architect to enhance the beauty of the building; by promoting and thus expressing its true purposes.
I have now had some personal experience in this matter which I will put into percentages. From what I have seen, I not only believe, but know, that one per cent of the cost of building, put into employing a really competent expert librarian, will save from ten per cent to forty per cent on the cost, in space, convenience and material. If you doubt, why not verify the facts by inquiring of some trustees or donors who have tried the experiment? They are surely unprejudiced and credible witnesses. One per cent spent in saving ten per cent is a net economy, worth at least considering.
This principle, first applied to library matters by Henry J. Carr in 1891, has been recognized recently by the Mayor of Rochester. Having in hand the establishment of a central library and a system of branches, he sent for a leading librarian of great experience, got his advice, for which a liberal fee was paid, and no doubt thus saved for the city thousands of dollars which might otherwise have been wasted in experiments and bungling.
“The internal arrangements should be devised by a person practically acquainted with the working of such a library as the building is intended to accommodate, and not by architects or building committees” (or inexperienced librarians) “without such experimental knowledge.”—Fletcher.[67]
“There is an increasing disposition in planning libraries, to turn to experts,”—Foster.[68]
No experienced librarian would allow without vigorous protest such waste of space and money as is referred to in the Boston Transcript[69] thus: “The increased cost of administration in some of the newer palatial library buildings is alarming. In one, the cost was nearly threefold, in another nearly fourfold what it was before.” This might have been saved, or at least largely reduced, by paying a modest fee to a good expert.
Calculate the cost of each cubic foot of wasted space, the cost for twenty years to come of lighting, heating, cleaning and repairs for useless space; the salary of additional attendants to care for unnecessary processes, and you will find that economizing on advice will waste thousands of dollars.
Problem Always New
It is folly to try to copy except perhaps in a minimum grade library—in embryo or rudimentary form. Perhaps in a very small and remote community, without a trained librarian, with no experienced librarians near, and far from a library commission, it would be safe to ask a local builder or carpenter to duplicate some small building pictured in such a manual as I have suggested, by Miss Marvin and Mr. Eastman. But never except in the smallest grade.
Even among the libraries usually called small, there are differences of site, location, community, state of development, size, methods, aims, funds, prospects of growth, which will distinguish or should distinguish each new building from all other buildings. As soon as a library begins to have a character of its own—and this development comes early in America—its library problem merits and absolutely requires independent study. Every community, every institution, wants to have a library suited exactly to its characteristics, and the library should have a building suited exactly to its character.
“The problem presented to an architect by a library board is always essentially new.”—Mauran.[70]
“Special and local conditions place a new problem before the builder every time.”—O. Bluemner.[71]
Plan Inside First
Librarian and architect should collaborate from the beginning in every interior detail. The exterior should not even be considered until the interior has been entirely mapped out.
This elemental maxim does not appear to have been laid down until the formulation of the “Points of Agreement.” Indeed, the first mistakes in building libraries, and the mistakes still too often made, may be attributed largely to the search for precedents in style, the formulation of the exterior before what it is to hold or express is defined. Most architectural competitions (except those held to dodge responsibility in selecting an architect) arise from an impression on the part of the building committee and the board and community they represent, that the looks of the library building, the effect it makes on the public, is the main thing to secure, not so much the proper housing and handling of the books.
The whole argument of this volume is that a library is a library, a book- and study-workshop or factory; only incidentally an ornament; no more, certainly, than a schoolhouse needs to be. If so, its motives are all utilitarian, to be studied out first of all, thoroughly and faithfully, before a thought is given to exterior conditions, or any details of exterior or interior ornament. This consideration should be reiterated and hammered into the consciousness of all concerned—architect, committee, community.
“Taking into account the practical uses of the modern library, it is readily seen that it needs a building planned from inside and not from without, dictated by convenience rather than taste, no matter how good.”—Fletcher.[72]
“Consider the plans first, rather than the elevation. The outside of the library building is its least important feature.”—Duff-Brown.[73]
The buildings planned thus, by gradual development of ideal interior arrangements, are very likely in the hands of a skillful architect to turn out architecturally beautiful. For the designer, as he has advised about structural points has gradually evolved from these details a harmonious conception of what the library is to be and do, the relation it holds to its surroundings and to the public, until an ideal scheme of proportion and sympathy flashes into his mind, and Utilitas has led him up to complete Venustas.
Never Copy Blindly
I should not suppose that any building committee would be senseless enough to “convey” an exterior from another building labelled “library,” and try to cram their own institution into it, but in reading a recent number of The Librarian of London, I found this paragraph:[74] “Within the last few weeks the surveyor was instructed to draw plans from a photograph of another institution.... Without knowing all the factors going to the making of the plan of a library in another part of the country it would be impossible to say, without consultation, that they would be suitable for the particular circumstances of this one.” But it is not necessary to go so far abroad for a warning. We all remember that eminent trustees and a distinguished architect went farther to appropriate a design, and imitate it here in America—not often accused of poverty of invention. The cult that admired it, admired it so much as to copy their borrowed work for buildings they labelled “libraries” all over the United States. If you do not realize the fidelity of this “copy,” and if you own Champney’s “Public Libraries,” look at page 134, “The Boston Public Library,” and then turn to “Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, Paris,” opposite page 139. And if you have Burgoyne’s “Library Construction,” read pages 255 to 257, which reflect in mild and courteous terms the criticisms of American librarians on this architectural plagiarism. To recall the criticisms of Winsor, or Poole, or Cutter, would not be so mild.
As a result of similar mistakes, librarians are united as to slavish imitations of exteriors or interiors, but perhaps some small libraries might be willing to copy an interior arrangement more or less closely. Before doing so, however, they should secure overwhelming testimony as to the practical merits of the plan as adapted to new needs; and even then a practical librarian and architect could probably find modifications which would make it more thoroughly fitted to all local conditions. Certainly another plan ought not be copied until after careful consideration of all present and anticipated requirements of the problem in hand.
“No library can be successfully imitated from another.”—W. A. Otis (architect).[75]
“No model plan can be said to be best.”—Burgoyne.[76]
“It is useless to attempt setting forward an ideal plan.”—O. Bluemner.[77]
“A building committee is not likely to secure what it wants by copying or even by competition.”—Eastman.[78]
Study precedents always and thoroughly, but do not try to follow any of them implicitly, nor expect to find a type or model you can imitate.
Study of Other Libraries
By Visit. The best preparation for planning, and later the best test and corrective of your plans, will lie in visits to other libraries of like grade, size, character, and constituency as your own, especially if their librarians are intelligent, experienced, and thoroughly frank about both the merits and the faults of their buildings, and will tell you what to avoid as well as what to imitate. Observe carefully (with note-book and pencil in hand) size and collocation of rooms; height of walls; dimensions and make of furniture; suitability and finish of all materials; effect of coloring; placing and size of windows; distribution, effectiveness, and economy of artificial lights; all the various points which will aid you in solving your own problems. Carry a measuring tape, and get all dimensions down to scale. If your architect can go with you, at least on a second or review trip, so much the better. If he cannot do this, have specific recommendations ready for him at your next conference.
Examining Plans. Next to personal visits, intelligent inspection and comparison of plans will help you after you have gone some way toward formulating your own plans. I would not advise too premature, or too promiscuous study of plans. There are so many accessible to a searcher, of so many different grades, and such varying degrees of excellence, that indiscriminate and reckless inspection is very apt to bring on mental dyspepsia.
Disregard at first exteriors, which distract attention from essentials. Confine yourself to floor plans and interiors of libraries of your own size and class. Preferably take modern plans, certainly those of leading libraries in all sections which are imbued with the modern progressive ideas. You will find no lack of material. If you use it wisely and eclectically, it will help clarify your ideas. Note the plans which seem to you best; go back to them again and again; at each study discard those which are less satisfactory; and when you have reduced your list to a few very nearly right, compare them with your own sketches until you are quite sure that you have incorporated all their best points.
You will not perhaps have much access to English books. If you do you will find interesting views and plans in Duff-Brown, Burgoyne, Champneys, and Cotgreave; but they will hardly help you much, because English methods are somewhat different from ours. Some late plans for large libraries, given in “The Librarian,” seem to show wasteful attempts at architectural effect. Three things in the plans of small English libraries, you will note, and should learn from—the clever adaptation of irregular sites, the effective use of top-light, and the economy of space in entrance halls.
In America there are plans in plenty. The most helpful are the most recent.
Koch has over a hundred plans from all parts of the country, including branches, most of them costing from $10,000 to $50,000. But as yet he has no letter-press to explain the plans.
Miss Marvin gives exterior and interior views and floor plans, with full descriptions of twenty libraries, costing from $2,600 up to $75,000. No one should plan a library of any size without giving her pamphlet a careful reading.
Eastman gives exteriors, interiors and floor plans of twenty-five libraries, ranging in cost from $1,170 to $80,000.
H. B. Adams has twenty-five exteriors, forty interiors and only thirteen floor plans. Bostwick has seven floor plans.
The Massachusetts Public Library Commission Report for 1899 shows one hundred and twenty exteriors, with letter-press giving costs, but no interiors or floor plans.
The Boston Public Library Index to Plans of Library Buildings, second edition 1899, refers to over twelve hundred illustrations in various books, pamphlets and periodicals, of which the largest number are only exteriors, a few are interiors, one hundred and twenty only are floor plans.
There are many exteriors of libraries, usually without interiors or floor plans, published in popular and in architectural periodicals, but very few of them furnish valuable suggestions as to planning. Indeed much plan hunting will rather daze than instruct an investigator. A common defect in plans is the total absence of information about the height of rooms—a vital measurement. Indeed every plan should tell, both the height of each story, floor to floor, and the height of each room, floor to ceiling.
There are many interesting plans, with descriptions, scattered among annual or special library reports, but these have not been indexed together in any one place. If one of the library-schools could compile as a thesis, an index to plans of library buildings in books and magazines, distinguishing between exteriors, interiors, floor plans and letter-press information, and if someone like Mr. Eastman or Miss Marvin could supply comments as a guide through this mass of material, it would be a good thing for the A. L. A. Publishing Board to father. The A. L. A. itself once attempted to get a collection of floor plans and got about a hundred sets as a start, but I believe has never prepared any such card-index of features, with such comments as would make them valuable. I believe the Library Bureau has also a considerable collection of plans.
The Life of a Library Building
This is a crucial question in problems of building. In a recent discussion as to how much should be appropriated a trustee soberly urged that the library should have the finest, the most impressive, the most beautiful building in town, and that it should be built solidly enough to last hundreds of years, like the mediæval cathedrals. But besides the question of first cost, how far can a town afford to go in its expenditure for a library, while it has schools to build, roads to improve, sewers to lay, parks and playgrounds to develop? Besides this comes the question whether it is wise to erect such barriers to change as the walls and partitions of a too solid building would offer.
Opinion of librarians is practically unanimous to the effect that growth or change of methods will bring need of alterations, additions, or entire rebuilding, in all active libraries in less than a generation. Thus,—
“Librarians are among the most progressive of the world’s workers and a library building, however well arranged, may be out of date in a year or so.”—Edward B. Green.[79]
“You cannot foresee the future. Provide for ten years” (in a small library).—Miss Marvin.
“Estimate growth for twenty years.”—Eastman.
“It is not only unnecessary but unwise to plan for more than thirty years ahead, because library administration may radically change.”[80]
“Twenty-five years will probably find your building out of date, out of place, and a burden.”—Dana.[81]
“In England the Manchester library outgrew its building in forty-three years; at Leeds, in twenty-three years; at Glasgow, in twenty years; at Birmingham, in thirty years.”—Burg.[82]
My own calculations have been made for twenty-five years and I should call this the life of the average library building. Unless in very stagnant institutions and communities, there is sure to come, in much less than that time, say in five or ten years, growth in books or in use, requiring enlargement; again, equal growth in the next five, or ten years. Then the enlargements become entirely inadequate to new conditions or new management, and by the time the building has been occupied twenty-five years the trustees are fortunate if they have so little money invested that they can afford to pull it down and build a more modern building, arranged according to the latest ideas for the latest wants.
On the other hand an institution or a town may have money given it by a donor who wants a handsome and solid building. The question will then arise, “How compromise between certainty of change, and desire for permanence?” Why not in such case do what has been suggested for college libraries—put up a fine façade, to last a century or more, and use modern methods of light construction for all behind it; thus combining architectural effect with ease of alteration?
The Time to Build
Don’t Build too Soon. All authorities warn against building prematurely.
“It is a risky undertaking for a board to erect a building in the first stage of their enterprise. Better wait until its wants are developed in temporary quarters.”—Wm. F. Poole.[83]
“Don’t build until you have the library, the librarian, and the money.”—J. C. Dana.[84]
“Get your librarian, books, and methods first. Use rented rooms until you know what you want. Almost any rooms can be made to serve as a beginning, and can be so planned that the fixtures and furniture are all available for a new building. Experience will then teach just the kind of building that is needed for that particular town and library.”[85]
Alter Sparingly. In a building given you already occupied, make such not too expensive enlargements or alterations as growth absolutely demands, but take a long look ahead toward rebuilding. With the changes in library methods developing so rapidly, a patched old building soon becomes hopelessly out of date, and clogs progress. Better save up money and cultivate opinion in favor of building anew. Looking a generation ahead, economy alone will demand, at some not distant time, a building in which economy of time and service will be possible. Do not go down to posterity in patched-up old clothes.
But Begin to Prepare Early. As soon as your librarian is selected, your books bought, and your method started, it is never too early to think and talk building. It will take a long time of fixed purpose to work up to a gift or an appropriation. To canvass merits of sites, to study precedents of management, to calculate chances of development, to educate your librarian, to watch and ask about architects, to pick out deliberately the ideal building committee, will occupy many interesting hours at board meetings and consume months or years of preparation. While you are about it, time so taken will allow you to accumulate a lot of information, and to mature your judgment. If you have your librarian get him to look up the files of the library journals, and the annual reports of libraries of your grade and class, and such as are rather ahead of you, who have already realized what your future may be. In these you will pick up here and there many useful hints of experience. If you go to library club meetings and talk with trustees and librarians with similar problems to yours; if you take an occasional leisurely jaunt to well-managed neighboring libraries, you will absorb and be able to digest ideas which a hurried search, after beginning to build, might not elicit just when you want to use them.
And do not Put Off too Long. But when you are ready, go! Patient preparation has fitted all for wise decision and prompt action. There is a psychological moment at which public or donor may be carried by storm, and the necessary funds can be secured. He who hesitates then, is surely lost. When the money is secured, and sufficient experience or advice has been accumulated, the sooner you decide to begin to plan, the better. Beginning to plan, however, is remote from actual building. “Well lathered is half shaved” is a homely proverb, and the analogy holds in library planning, even for the smallest building. Months to formulate and fit together the first sketches, months to work them out practically with the architect, many conferences with the building committee, time after decision to prepare working plans, time still to invite and compare bids, then the slow processes of building,—there is a deal of delay ahead after the decision is made to build. You have just about got half through when you finish these preliminaries.
The time to build is therefore when you are very sure everything is ripe for action;—methods, preparation, plans, enthusiasm, harmony, good advice, suitable agents, sufficient funds.
Size and Cost
At the outset either the cost must be estimated as the first step toward getting an appropriation, a subscription, or a donation; or the cost has already been provided for, and the first step must be to see how large a building it will allow.
In the former alternative, it is necessary to ascertain how many books are to be provided for, how many readers there may be in the several departments to be covered by the work of that particular library, and how large a staff can be afforded, with ample elbow room for them all. The figures thus collected will enable an expert to give the number of rooms and passages required, with a maximum and minimum size, and a tentative location of each room. By deciding on the number of stories and the height of each, the architect can then pack all into the least possible space and calculate first the area of each floor and the cubic contents and cost of an adequate building, to be verified by the average cost of similar libraries in similar locations, built under similar conditions. A rough but surprisingly close estimate of the proper limit of cost may be reached through reversing Carnegie’s stipulation for a pledge of an annual ten per cent on cost for running expenses; and taking ten times what the library costs a year to run, or will take after completion. The result is testimony to the wisdom of Mr. Carnegie’s library advisers.
In the latter alternative the librarian and architect can at once get an approximation to a size which the cost will allow by dividing the sum available by the same pro forma cost per cubic foot. Having thus arrived at the maximum of size, they can tentatively assume the height and divide the cubic contents by it, to find how many square feet can be afforded to a floor. After this comes the puzzle how to get into this space the proper collocation of all the rooms wanted, as large as they ought to be.
See interesting calculation as to number of users to be provided for in the different departments (in England, not quite the same as ours) for towns of various sizes, by Champneys,[86] quoting Duff-Brown. His tables may suggest a basis of calculation here. See also Duff-Brown in his own book.[87]
The Cubic Cost. This question is not difficult, if you can reach a fairly exact standard for cost per cubic foot. Of course this will vary with the material used, and with the cost both of material and labor in different localities. Various authorities quote it variously. In the problems I have personally investigated, in eastern New England, I have found that thirty-five cents cost per cubic foot, for a simple warehouse-construction building, including stack and furniture, was not too much to allow. But Miss Marvin[88] says that in the Middle West the building proper will cost from 11 to 14 cents per cubic foot, or large solid buildings 20 to 25 cents, plus 10 per cent of the total for fees, furniture and finishing. As I always include these items in my calculations, the estimates are not far apart.
Our English brethren are able to do somewhat better if Champneys is correct—he ought to be, he is an architect. He says, “As a general rule, 1s. per cubic foot is probably about the right allowance in London, if all fixtures are included, while 9d. or 10d., or less, is sometimes sufficient in the provinces.”[89] Perhaps, however, he does not include fees and furnishing.
To calculate cubes, outside measurements of the walls should be taken for the square area, and the height should be measured from the floor of the basement to the roof, or to half-way from eaves to ridge-pole, if the roof is not flat.
Limiting Annual Outlay. In planning remember to watch not only first cost, but future expense of running your library. The more expensive your material, the larger its maintenance will probably be for care and repair. The larger your halls and stairways, the more diffuse your rooms, the farther departments are separated, the more wasteful your heating and lighting, the more your service will cost. Good planning may easily save you ten per cent on first cost, and twenty per cent every year for the life of the building—a whole generation. Calculate this saving for yourself, and be careful!
“It is impossible to have good administration without a building properly planned,”—The Libr. Asst.[90]
An architect generally overlooks those essentials which may appear trivial, yet are of the greatest importance.—Ibid.
Cutting Down Cost. From the first a wise planner will study to limit expense in every detail. After all possible economy, however, the wants will so outrun the possibilities, that when architect and librarian and adviser have agreed on a plan and it has been accepted by the building committee, the first experimental estimates will go beyond the limit.
On what points will it be possible to cut down, without serious sacrifice, from the library point of view?
In the first place, size. As cost is largely in proportion to cubic contents, every cubic foot saved pares down expense. It will generally be hard to spare floor area anywhere, but there can often be reduction of height in rooms or floors. The only real library requisites of height are air-capacity, and reach of light from windows across rooms. The architect often wants certain heights for architectural effect,—but always try to pin him down to what is actually necessary for comfort in every room, and point out where mezzanine rooms would serve in high stories.
In the next place comes ornament, exterior and interior. In the John Hay library at Brown University, several thousand dollars’ expense was saved by omitting the cornice around the outside rear wall of the stack room, without sacrifice of effect. In the Brookline cut-down,[91] several thousand dollars were saved by omitting two ornamental but superfluous gardens outside.
In a city, try to get the park department to assume the cost of laying out the library grounds.
Then the entrance and halls and staircases, as originally sketched, will be often found unnecessarily large when tested by library requirements. At Brookline the larger part of the saving was made on such extras. Outside steps, platform, columns, cornices, balustrades and the like, are often superfluous.
On material, again, much permissible saving can be made. Inquiry of the architect will elicit that less expensive material or finish will give as much strength, durability and also as good effect as the first choice.
“Shingles instead of slate, plain glass instead of plate glass, cheaper brick, cheaper finish, omitting fireplaces, using wood floors instead of tile.”—Miss Marvin.[92]
“Don’t waste money in too substantial construction and fireproofing.”—Stanley.[93]
When the inquiry is made of him, the architect will usually prove to be suggestive as to economies. He will be much more interested in savings than in extravagance, and he knows just where savings can be made without real sacrifice of strength, utility, or beauty. In fact, it is here and in suggestion of alternatives in meeting library needs, that a practical architect will often surprise the librarian.
Indeed, I have been surprised myself in finding how keen an architect can be when this question comes up. One would think he would hate not only to forego any of his commission, but also to give up what seem to be essential elements in a harmonious scheme. But in all economies of this kind in which I have taken part, the architect has thrown himself into problems of saving with as much zeal as if he were to benefit rather than the owner.
Open Access
The admission of readers freely to the shelving, both readers who want to select books to borrow for home-reading, and those who wish to select from the shelves books for serious reading in the building, has become a common policy of libraries under the name of “open access.”
For the benefit of borrowers of new books, popular books or late fiction (in children’s rooms, children’s books), open-access rooms are usually provided with wall or floor shelving, or alcoves so widely spaced as to allow free inspection of the books. Where there is not a separate room or suite of rooms, there is a corner of the light-reading room shelved for this use.
See “Carrels”[94] as to open access to the stack.
“Let the shelves be open, and the public admitted to them. Give the people such liberty with their own collection of books as the bookseller gives them with his.”—Dana.[95]
This development of use has changed the problems of planning in our generation more than any other new idea, as will be realized in looking at floor-plans of any of the old libraries.
The decision of the librarian and the trustees as to what policy is to be adopted in all parts of the building in relation to open access will largely govern planning of all the departments. Even after a decision is given, the question will arise, “Ought provision be made for possible changes of method in future?”
Light, Warmth, Fresh Air
After the library is finished, the staff will have to work and the public to read in it.
The eyesight of everyone that enters the building is dependent on the steady soft incidence, reflection, diffusion, concentration, abundance, of natural and artificial light supplied; their comfort summer and winter depends on the amount of heat tempered or admitted; the clearness of their brains, their ability to read and comprehend depends on methods of ventilation; the permanent health of all obliged to stay any length of time in the library may be seriously affected by the care or neglect of those who plan these vital elements of construction. Better have the building plain, even ugly, with these essentials perfect, than impressive and elegant without them.
From the very first, in planning small or medium, the large, or the largest libraries—in corridors, rooms, hails, or stacks,—ponder these needs as you go on, seek defects or merits in these directions as you visit other buildings; set aside sufficient time for special and deliberate study and review of these problems, librarian, adviser and architect in solemn conclave, and resolve to have your building, in these particulars at least, the best one not only in your own state, but in America and in the world.
As is elsewhere urged again and again, spend what money you have to spare, in such essentials, rather than in the luxuries of unnecessarily expensive material, decoration, or furniture.
See special chapters, later on, on Lighting, Heating, and Ventilation.
Faults to be Looked For
In visiting other libraries or looking at other plans, the virtues are sometimes hard to detect, but there are some faults even a novice can see. For instance—
- Heaviness or embellishment of exterior, unsuited to a library.
- Arched or pointed, mullioned or leaded windows, obstructive of light.
- Domes, with rotundas beneath.
- Columns and porticoes.
- Overhanging roofs or cornices.
- Stories, corridors, or rooms, unnecessarily high in the walls.
- Waste of floor space.
- Ornamental and excessively broad or massive stairways.
- Stairs and corridors separating rooms which should adjoin.
- Poor light anywhere; light in the eyes of readers instead of on the backs or pages of books.
- Drafts, or absence of air.
These are a few common faults; any good librarian can suggest others from his or her own experience.
As the classes of library schools go about visiting libraries, it would be well to have some expert instructor or guide point out obvious faults of construction. The local librarian could best show merits. Special reports or theses on buildings would advance the cause of rational planning among the coming generation of librarians.
Frankness Among Librarians
A certain amount of reticence among librarians in talking about faults of their own buildings to visitors, leads me to write this chapter. Whether it is due to diffidence in posing as critics without enough experience, or more likely to a spirit of loyalty to their institution, I have not been able to determine. But certainly such a spirit is disloyal to the cause of library science. No progress can be made in building if every librarian must act only on his own experience for his own building. Every sensible man can see the good, the bad and the indifferent among the tools put into his hands. Every practical man can suggest corrections of faults, perfection of the mediocre, even improvement of the good. When a brother-librarian who is about to build comes to ask advice and look over methods and means, the largest loyalty is due to one’s profession and the public, and the incumbent ought to give full benefit of his experience and his opinion to the visitor, under the pledge of silence if he wishes, but concealing nothing. His opinions may be mistaken, his experience slender, but the very statement will challenge the judgment of the inquirer and enlarge the scope of his vision.
So the visitor in his turn, after going through his planning, and occupying his new library, ought to pass the methods he has selected, minutely in review, and speak or write of them to visitors, at clubs, or in professional periodicals, with like frankness. If he will be candid about his own experience, a librarian who has just built may be the wisest critic possible, and may doubly help those who follow in his path.
He who has experimented with a new device or a new method, if he tests thoroughly, impartially and sanely, can be especially useful to his fellows by frankness in reporting his praise or criticism.
Indeed, every experienced librarian who is also ingenious, ought to try experiments as he has the opportunity, not only in methods but in appliances. A hundred bright minds, working in the same direction, will be sure to hit upon new devices which will simplify processes and better the building and furnishing of years to come.
Service and Supervision
These are underlying elements of library planning which only a librarian who has practised them thoroughly understands. Even the “library architect” may fail to grasp these on a new problem.
“Have the building convenient for both work and supervision, where many a costly building fails. Have all departments in harmonious relations, so as to serve the public best, and at least cost in money, time, and labor.”—Eastman.[96]
Service. Short lines for every process are the essential. There has been rather a tendency among architects to imagine that modern contrivances can overcome space, but every step, every motion, takes time; every step, every motion saved, promotes efficient service, and keeps the public waiting a second less. If you use pages or “runners,” plan to shorten their runs. If you use mechanical substitutes, speed them up, run them on straight lines, avoid complications and corners. Study every motion, every handling of a book in all the processes of a library, and save a second here and a second there. In sizable buildings, you will thus be able to save not only minutes but often hours through every work day of their future. “Many a mickle saves a muckle,” is true of packing, passing, cataloguing, handling, cleaning, collecting, distributing.
Do not be deceived by the suggestion that labor-saving devices change principles. A yard is more than a foot, by machine as well as by boy. Save time on machines as on pages. Your needs will soon outrun both.
Supervision. “Helpfulness should be aimed at, rather than supervision,” says Champneys,[97] and certainly it should be aimed at with supervision. Accessibility to helpless inquirers invites as well as facilitates easy inquiries. But in America we find that supervision deters as well as detects disorder, noise, mutilation, theft.
Duff-Brown[98] calls attention to one aid not often thought of,—the supervision of one reader over another. This acts where students and serious readers congregate, but somewhat fails in periodical and light-reading and children’s rooms. There supervision is more necessary.
In small libraries, supervision from the delivery desk is all that is generally possible. It can be facilitated by open floors, glass screens, avoidance of corners or projections, and radial bookcases. In larger libraries, provision for attendants at strategic points, such as corners which command adjoining rooms, can be so arranged as to help and supervise with minimum service. A well-arranged desk for each attendant placed thus on picket, will enable him or her to pursue any assigned desk work, without interfering with supervision or information.
Supervision of doors, entrance halls and stairways, is most necessary;—in small libraries, from the desk; in large libraries, through hall porters, who can also watch art treasures and exhibition cases, as well as direct visitors, and avert undesirables.
Decoration: Ornament
Ornament is the last thing to think of about a library. Noticeable exterior ornament is not needed for dignity, and conflicts with simplicity, two appropriate library qualities. “Outside ornament is often vulgar,” says Champneys.[99] Even statuary is not in keeping unless the building has memorial purposes, for which additional funds have been provided. Inside attempts at ornament are often grotesque. Marble columns are out of place, marble walls and staircases showy rather than sensible, wall or ceiling frescoes distracting, floor inlays disconcerting. If funds allow, such features and portraits in vestibules, passage-ways and conversation rooms do not interfere with reading or service. Portraits of donors or deceased trustees or librarians may do in delivery-rooms or light-reading rooms in which exigencies of use require high enough walls and few enough windows to leave available wall space. But in rooms for serious reading, there should be no features of any kind to interfere with reading or attract non-readers. Burgoyne comments,[100] “In Boston, the decorative art makes the public rooms art galleries instead of places for study. The two objects are quite incompatible. The crowds who gather to inspect the decorations are a nuisance to the student who comes to study.” See also the Report of the Examiners of the Boston Public Library in 1895.
“In the reading rooms, ornament which attracts the eye and creates interest, is a hindrance to the usefulness of the rooms.”—Beresford Pite.[101]
“Interior decoration should be subordinated to the use of the building.”—Champneys.[102]
Isadore, Bishop of Seville[103] (A.D. 600) says that “The best architects object to gilded ceilings in libraries, and to any other marble than cipollino for the floor, because the glitter of gold is hurtful to the eyes, while the green of cipollino is restful to them.”
From this it appears that the architects of that age were more considerate of readers than some in our own generation.
Coloring. I would draw a distinction between ornament and decorous decoration. If as much attention be given to the æsthetic influence as to the irradiating and ophthalmic effects of shades of color on wall and ceiling, the resulting beauty would at the same time charm, soothe and satisfy all visitors. Sufficient study is rarely ever given to this element of “Venustas.” In one of my own early problems, I employed a young artist who had a reputation as a colorist, to select tints for different rooms, with a result which fully justified the small fee he charged.
See four tints suggested at page 15 of the Boston report, mentioned under “Light, Artificial.”[104] From that report,[105] I quote:—
“For bright, sunny rooms a very light green is probably the best shade.”
“For darker rooms, a light buff.”
“The ceiling should be white, or slightly tinted.”
“The woodwork should be of a light color such as that of natural woods. Under no circumstances are dark walls and woodwork permissible.”
(This applies to schoolrooms, but what applies to scholars equally applies to readers in libraries, and these precepts apply to furniture as well as to the other woodwork.)
Miss Marvin[106] suggests that,—
“Green, yellow, terra-cotta, light brown, and tan are good.”
“No decoration is necessary except tinting.” [Excellent.]
“Corticene or burlap is good background for pictures.”
“Only one color is desirable for the interior of a small library.”
Reflection of light. Not only is color of walls and ceiling a prime element in decoration, but it also plays a large part in the cheerfulness and effectiveness of diffused light, both natural and artificial; especially in systems of indirect lighting. To select colors bright enough to reflect, and soft enough not to dazzle, is one of the nice problems of planning.
Architectural Styles
I dislike to stray upon the architect’s province, but this subject affects planning so radically, that I will venture to allude to it here, not as advice to architects but as a warning to building committees. In many conditions for competitions and in many discussions among trustees where there happen to be amateurs in architecture on the board, I see directions or hear suggestions about this or that style. To formulate any specific direction to the architect on this point at the outset seems to me a fatal mistake. The style ought to develop from the needs of the particular problem in hand. Until the architect knows just what he has to construct, to prescribe any conventional style only cramps him. Neither practical libraries nor American architecture can be developed by such swaddling clothes. Select an architect who can be regarded as competent and let him choose or create a style without lay dictation, after he comprehends his whole problem. Remember, you are not burying an old style; you are in at the birth of a new one.
“The most noticeable thing about architectural styles is the spontaneity of their growth, developing from the obvious conditions of building.”—Russell Sturgis.[107]
“Having agreed on a good plan, you cannot properly say to the architect, ‘We must have a classical building.’ It is the most difficult of all styles; formal symmetry requiring exceptional skill in the architect.”—W. A. Otis.[108]
Montgomery Schuyler writes, in his article on the “United States,” for Sturgis’s Dictionary of Architecture,[109] “For more than a generation, scarcely a public building was erected which was not at least supposed by its builders to be in the Grecian style. Nothing could have been practically more inconvenient than the requirement that one or more parts of a building divided into offices should be darkened by the projecting portico. In many cases this difficulty was sought to be obviated by converting the central space into a rotunda,—a wasteful arrangement.” Such is an architect’s comment on a feature which has been the librarian’s bête noir.
To quote further from this interesting article:—
“The United States had thus nothing to show in current building but copies of a pure and refined architecture, implicated with dispositions entirely unsuitable to almost all practical requirements.
“Even the most thoughtful of revivalists were apt to take mediæval architecture as a more or less literal model, rather than as a starting point for modern work.
“The later graduates (of the French school) devoted themselves, not to developing an architecture out of American conditions, but to domesticating current French work.”
(By the Chicago World’s Fair) “classic, in one or another of its modes, was re-established as the most eligible style for public buildings. No architect would now think of submitting in competition a design for a public building, in any other style than that officially sanctioned in France.
“There is no longer any pretence of using the selected style as a basis or point of departure to be modified and developed in accordance with American needs and ways of thinking, and with the introduction of new material and new modes of construction.... In civic buildings it may be said as a rule that there is no longer even an aspiration toward a national architecture.”
After discussing at length modern commercial buildings, Mr. Schuyler concludes with a sentence which may well be applied to libraries: “Out of the satisfaction of commonplace and general requirements may arise the beginnings of a national architecture.”
Will there ever be evolved a distinctive library architecture? I hardly think so. It will be possible to recognize a library as you can now tell a schoolhouse; but libraries if well planned will have more individualism, I think, more characteristic charm, than the generality of schoolhouses, but not a uniform architecture.
It is possible indeed that library loveliness will be developed as a recognizable type.