#FINDMEFRIDAY: The Boston Public Library

Congratulations to Mordecai Choi for being the first student to tweet a selfie from the October 5th #FindMeFriday location!

  

A little about this week’s location:

The Boston Central Library is located in Copley Square at the intersection of Dartmouth and Boylston Streets. The BPL is made up of two large buildings, McKim Building and Johnson Building. The BPL is 930,000 square feet and has a collection of about 23,000,000 items.

I recognize that the Boston Public Library, with millions of quote-worthy books and journals, would be horrified to know that I am about to quote Wikipedia, but it is what it is…

“Included in the BPL’s research collection are more than 1.7 million rare books and manuscripts. It possesses wide-ranging and important holdings, including medieval manuscripts and incunabula, early editions of William Shakespeare (among which are a number of Shakespeare quartos and the First Folio), the George Ticknor collection of Spanish literature, a major collection of Daniel Defoe, records of colonial Boston, the personal 3,800 volume library of John Adams, the mathematical and astronomical library of Nathaniel Bowditch, important manuscript archives on abolitionism, including the papers of William Lloyd Garrison, and a major collection of materials on the Sacco and Vanzetti case. There are large collections of prints, photographs, postcards, and maps. The library, for example, holds one of the major collections of watercolors and drawings by Thomas Rowlandson. The library has a special strength in music, and holds the archives of the Handel and Haydn Society, scores from the estate of Serge Koussevitzky, and the papers of and grand piano belonging to the important American composer Walter Piston.

For all these reasons, the historian David McCullough has described the Boston Public Library as one of the five most important libraries in America, the others being the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the university libraries of Harvard and Yale.”   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Public_Library)

The Boston Public Library is just a little over a mile away from campus. It has winding hallways, cozy nooks, a wonderful cafe and an outdoor courtyard, creating a perfect location for a weekend studying, sketching, journal writing, or mindful relaxation. I promise, the Pia Romano would not be upset if, every now and then, rather than going to the Douglas D. Schumann Library and Learning Commons, you headed down to the Back Bay and enjoyed the historic grandeur of the Boston Public Library.

Go see your city, my friends!