New public library building, Boston, Mass. : 1/4 inch scale drawing for foundations of columns at Dartmouth Street entrance
New public library building, Boston, Mass.
Item Information
Title:
New public library building, Boston, Mass. : 1/4 inch scale drawing for foundations of columns at Dartmouth Street entrance
Description:
Beneath Our Feet: The Boston Public Library was originally located in a small building on Mason Street near the Common, until it moved to its new home in the Back Bay in 1895. Designed by famed architect Charles F. McKim, this "palace for the people" was built upon the "made" land that characterized the neighborhood. The blueprint drawing here, originally created in 1891, illustrates design concepts for the McKim Building's façade. Under a pair of block granite piers intended to support decorative columns, “piles” appear. Wooden pilings are thirty-foot long structural supports, driven into the hard clay below the Library’s foundation. They are present under most buildings in Back Bay.
Blueprint of the Dartmouth entrance of the Boston Public Library, showing walls, columns, piling and pedestals. Includes diagrams of columns.
"Drawing no.: 435; Date: Nov 16. 1891; Made by C.J.P."
Notes (exhibitions):
Exhibited: "Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the World Below" organized by the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, 2017-2018.
Exhibited: "Beneath Our Feet" organized by the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, 2017.
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