Author: Catherine J. Willis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738575063
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The Boston Public Library (BPL) was the first large municipally funded public library in the United States. Although the library was founded in 1848, the original idea was first proposed by French ventriloquist Alexandre Vattemare in 1841. In 1854, the library opened to the public in two rooms in a schoolhouse on Mason Street. Just four years later, the building on Boylston Street opened with 88,789 items. In 1871, the BPL was the first library in the country to open a branch, and by 1895, when the new central library was opened in Copley Square, 29 branches and reading rooms had opened. Charles Follen McKim was the principal architect of the new building, which is noted for its perfect proportions, magnificent murals, and beautiful ornamentation throughout the building. The tremendous growth of the library made it necessary to build an addition, and in 1972, the new building designed by Philip Johnson was opened.

Author: Horace Greeley Wadlin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description

Author: Abigail A. Van Slyck
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226850320
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Familiar landmarks in hundreds of American towns, Carnegie libraries have shaped the public library experience of generations of Americans and today seen far from controversial. In Free to All, however, Abigail Van Slyck shows that the classical facades and symmetrical plans of these buildings often mask the complex and contentious circumstances of their construction and use.

Author: Janet Kemper Beck
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786433450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
One of the triggering events of the Civil War helped divide a nation but also launched a cannonade of persuasive essays and propaganda. Early press reaction to John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry ranged from indignant horror in the South to stunned disbelief in the North. Brown's supporters wielded great power with their pens: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Lydia Maria Child. This book explores the moment when literature and history collided and literature rewrote history. This volume features 30 photographs, maps, proclamations and broadsides and a detailed timeline of events surrounding the raid.

Author: Hannah-Rose Murray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108805132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
During the nineteenth century and especially after the Civil War, scores of black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Moses Roper and Ellen Craft travelled to England, Ireland, Scotland, and parts of rural Wales to educate the public on slavery. By sharing their oratorical, visual, and literary testimony to transatlantic audiences, African American activists galvanised the antislavery movement, which had severe consequences for former slaveholders, pro-slavery defenders, white racists, and ignorant publics. Their journeys highlighted not only their death-defying escapes from bondage but also their desire to speak out against slavery and white supremacy on foreign soil. Hannah-Rose Murray explores the radical transatlantic journeys formerly enslaved individuals made to the British Isles, and what light they shed on our understanding of the abolitionist movement. She uncovers the reasons why activists visited certain locations, how they adapted to the local political and social climate, and what impact their activism had on British society.

Author: Ross MacTaggart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393057621
Category : Mansions
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
A re-creation of a time of fantastic wealth through never-before-seen photographs.

Author: Mary Ellen Quinn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810875454
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Although the history of librarianship as an organized profession dates only as far back as the mid-19th century, the history of libraries is much older, and people have been engaged in pursuits that we recognize as librarianship for many thousands of years. This book traces librarianship from its origins in ancient times through its development in response to the need to control the flood of information in the modern world to the profound transformations brought about by the new technologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The Historical Dictionary of Librarianship focuses on librarianship as a modern, organized profession, emphasizing the period beginning in the mid-19th century. Author Mary Ellen Quinn relates the history of this profession through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, libraries around the world, and notable organizations and associations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about librarianship.

Author: Jon C. Teaford
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142143525X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Originally published in 1984. In 1888 the British observer James Bryce declared "the government of cities" to be "the one conspicuous failure of the United States." During the following two decades, urban reformers would repeat Bryce's words with ritualistic regularity; nearly a century later, his comment continues to set the tone for most assessments of nineteenth-century city government. Yet by the end of the century, as Jon Teaford argues in this important reappraisal, American cities boasted the most abundant water supplies, brightest street lights, grandest parks, largest public libraries, and most efficient systems of transportation in the world. Far from being a "conspicuous failure," municipal governments of the late nineteenth century had successfully met challenges of an unprecedented magnitude and complexity. The Unheralded Triumph draws together the histories of the most important cities of the Gilded Age—especially New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Baltimore—to chart the expansion of services and the improvement of urban environments between 1870 and 1900. It examines the ways in which cities were transformed, in a period of rapid population growth and increased social unrest, into places suitable for living. Teaford demonstrates how, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, municipal governments adapted to societal change with the aid of generally compliant state legislatures. These were the years that saw the professionalization of city government and the political accommodation of the diverse ethnic, economic, and social elements that compose America's heterogeneous urban society. Teaford acknowledges that the expansion of urban services dangerously strained city budgets and that graft, embezzlement, overcharging, and payroll-padding presented serious problems throughout the period. The dissatisfaction with city governments arose, however, not so much from any failure to achieve concrete results as from the conflicts between those hostile groups accommodated within the newly created system: "For persons of principle and gentlemen who prized honor, it seemed a failure yet American municipal government left as a legacy such achievements as Central Park, the new Croton Aqueduct, and the Brooklyn Bridge, monuments of public enterprise that offered new pleasures and conveniences for millions of urban citizens."

Author: New York city, Astor libr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 902

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Author: Karl Haglund
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262083078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
An illustrated account of the creation of the Charles River Basin, focusing on the precarious balance between transportation planning and the stewardship of the public realm. The Charles River Basin, extending nine miles upstream from the harbor, has been called Boston's "Central Park." Yet few realize that this apparently natural landscape is a totally fabricated public space. Two hundred years ago the Charles was a tidal river, edged by hundreds of acres of salt marshes and mudflats. Inventing the Charles River describes how, before the creation of the basin could begin, the river first had to be imagined as a single public space. The new esplanades along the river changed the way Bostonians perceived their city; and the basin, with its expansive views of Boston and Cambridge, became an iconic image of the metropolis. The book focuses on the precarious balance between transportation planning and stewardship of the public realm. Long before the esplanades were realized, great swaths of the river were given over to industrial enterprises and transportation—millponds, bridges, landfills, and a complex network of road and railway bridges. In 1929, Boston's first major highway controversy erupted when a four-lane road was proposed as part of a new esplanade. At twenty-year intervals, three riverfront road disputes followed, successively more complex and disputatious, culminating in the lawsuits over "Scheme Z," the Big Dig's plan for eighteen lanes of highway ramps and bridges over the river. More than four hundred photographs, maps, and drawings illustrate past and future visions for the Charles and document the river's place in Boston's history.