A Word to the Architect
Here seems to be a good place to slip in an aside to any architect who chances on this book.
You will see that the keynote of the volume is belief that the library is more akin to a workshop than to Grant’s Tomb; perhaps akin to a literary workshop, like a school, would be a more correct definition, and you know how your profession grapples the schoolhouse problem, I have seen many new schoolhouses through the country, and have noticed how many of them are simple but effectively beautiful. All librarians believe that a perfect library inside, can be made charming outside, through taste such as has been shown in these schoolhouses. They ask architects to accept their workshop theory rather than a monumental conception.
The building committee are your real clients, not the librarian. To their decision you must bow, even if you have to assume blame for a poor inside. But if they give you a free hand and a library adviser, defer to him. If he is not up to his job, if he is callow or antiquated or faddy, be patient with him. With the tact your profession knows how to exercise, interpret what advice he tries to give, supplement his failings with your own study of the subject, and plan the best library possible under these circumstances. So shall you win a crown of glory among librarians.
But if they give you a mature and wise adviser, welcome him as a friend and lend ear to his experienced advice. You will become a better architect in one branch of your profession, he will broaden much in his, and together you will advance both library science and architecture.
If you are altruistic, there can be no better opportunity to serve the public than by curbing your artistic ambition and devoting all your training and ability to making this building a better library than has yet been devised.
If you thus plan truly from inside outward, I will predict that you will satisfy the public and yourself far more than if you had thrust an unwilling library into an inadequate shell, or had prostituted your genius by forcing a false type of architecture on your helpless clients.
As you must have gathered from glancing through this book, I am a firm believer in the practical genius and taste of the best American architects. I believe that they can create consummate beauty out of the most unpromising conditions, and I hope you will thus grapple library problems.