The blistering heat of 100 degrees had us not in a roaming around mode. Although, Bill loves walking around in the hot sun but with Sarah with me I felt the need to set a slower pace. We walked across Copley Plaza toward the the Boston Public Library. The air conditioned interior felt like heaven. Entering the library, your fist sight is the beautiful, yellowish marble stairway leading to the second floor where the John Singer Sargent mural is located. The building was designed by the renown architect Charles McKim. It was the first library in the country to let people borrow books.
HISTROY OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY:
Charles Follen McKim's design shows influence from a number of architectural precedents. McKim drew explicitly on the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris (designed by Henri Labrouste, built 1845 to 1851) for the general arrangement of the facade that fronts on Copley Square, but his detailing of that facade's arcaded windows owes a clear debt to the side elevations of Leon Battista Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. The open-air courtyard at the center of the building is based closely on that of the sixteenth-century Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. McKim also exploited up-to-date building technology, as the library represents one of the first major applications, in the United States, of the system of thin tile vaults (or catalan vaults) exported from the Catalan architectural tradition by the valencian Rafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the library.[2]
[edit]Murals
Murals include recently restored paintings by John Singer Sargent on the theme of The Triumph of Religion;[3] Edwin Austin Abbey's most famous work, a series of murals which depict the Grail legend; and paintings of the Muses by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
HISTROY OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY:
Charles Follen McKim's design shows influence from a number of architectural precedents. McKim drew explicitly on the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris (designed by Henri Labrouste, built 1845 to 1851) for the general arrangement of the facade that fronts on Copley Square, but his detailing of that facade's arcaded windows owes a clear debt to the side elevations of Leon Battista Alberti's Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. The open-air courtyard at the center of the building is based closely on that of the sixteenth-century Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. McKim also exploited up-to-date building technology, as the library represents one of the first major applications, in the United States, of the system of thin tile vaults (or catalan vaults) exported from the Catalan architectural tradition by the valencian Rafael Guastavino. Seven different types of Guastavino vaulting can be seen in the library.[2]
[edit]Murals
Murals include recently restored paintings by John Singer Sargent on the theme of The Triumph of Religion;[3] Edwin Austin Abbey's most famous work, a series of murals which depict the Grail legend; and paintings of the Muses by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
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