This Day in History 11 March, 1895: Boston Public Library

On this date, the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library was opened to the public. Called by the city the “palace of the people”, the library was the first public building in the Beaux-Arts Classicism taste of the revival style period in American architecture.

This Day in History 11 March, 1895: Opening of Boston Public Library

McKim, Mead, and White, Boston Public Library McKim Building, 1887-1895   Image © 2026 Davis Art Images (8s-6933)

As seen in this building, McKim preferred clear geometrical forms, balance and order in his classicism, while it definitely obtained the scale of Beaux-Arts Classicism. Details such as decorative stonework or friezes were subtly integrated into the whole, while the design overall relies heavily on symbolism based on the function of the building.

Typical features of Beaux-Arts Classicism include the pedestal-like ground floor with rusticated ashlar masonry, cornice enriched with dentilation or "classical" frieze sculpture. The overall effect of McKim, Mead and White buildings is a balanced, clear-eyed classicism with low drama. The like the palaces of the Italian Renaissance, Beaux Arts Classicism often imitated the piano nobile arrangement -- simple, rusticated ground floor often with few or no windows, and more elaborately decorated second floor, the so-called "noble floor" (floor where the family lived). The piano nobile of the Boston Public Library features an arcade supported on square piers with decorative medallions in the pendentives (the rounded triangular area between each arch).

Background 

From the Renaissance period (ca. 1400-1600) in Europe until the late 1700s, one form or another of "classicism" held sway in architecture. After the discovery of the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 1748, a more simplified, historically accurate and codified Neoclassicism came to dominate architecture. Classicism aesthetic held sway in European and American architecture well into the early 1900s, however, after the first two decades of the 1800s, there was a rebellion against the limiting, strict purity of Neoclassicism.

Architects who looked for more expressive styles began introducing design elements from a myriad of past historical styles, from Ancient Egyptian to French Renaissance Chateau. There were also many elaborations on classicism, influenced by Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The most enduring style in public building in the US was Beaux-Arts Classicism, a combination of Baroque Revival and the grandiose classicism of the French Second Empire Baroque (ca. 1860-1890).

Charles McKim (1847-1909) was the founder of one of the most prestigious architectural firms at the turn of the 1900s in the US. Born in Pennsylvania, he studied initially at Harvard, and then in 1867 worked in an architectural office in New York. He spent three years at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he learned the Second Empire Baroque revival style. He also traveled to England where he was impressed by the clean geometry and lines of Georgian classicism of the late 1700s and early 1800s, particularly the public buildings of John Nash.
In 1870 he entered the office of architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), most famous for his Romanesque Revival designs. 

McKim's early designs incorporated a variety of influences, including the rustic stone architecture of rural France, Japanese architecture, and American colonial domestic architecture. When he formed McKim, Mead and White with William Mead (1846-1928) and Stanford White (1853-1906), he had settled on a restrained Beaux-Arts Classicism that rejected overt amounts of ornament or sculptural facades, both characteristics of French Beaux-Arts Classicism.