Domes. Many architects are fond of the effect of a dome, but its top and bulb are of no use in a library, and the obsession of space below balks compact plans in the centre of the building. Domes cover many an impressive, and more or less drafty, reading room, but they waste bulk which costs, and dislocate departments.
If you see any views of libraries where domes are conspicuous you may set them down as failures, however beautiful;—bad types to imitate; their architects to be avoided. The only possible place suitable for a dome, is in a very large library, to cover a central reading room, and even there the space it must occupy ought to be very carefully studied at the outset, to calculate whether so much open height is the best way to utilize the cubic contents. It ought never be planned primarily as an architectural feature, and thus imposed on library methods, unless they are promoted by it, rather than hindered.
Alcoves, Galleries
From England, where alcoves in old libraries are so fascinating to travelers, I find this passage in The Library Association Record:[184] “The alcove system should probably not be mentioned in an essay on modern methods of book storage.”
Oldest of library methods, the alcove even now lingers where it ought not. As I have said,[185] it is an agreeable feature where solitude and ease are allowable, but it is as much out of place in a public library as lounges would be, wasting space, blocking supervision, delaying service, deluding scholars with the illusion of isolation, and making their nooks the convenient harbors for whisperers. If you must have them, have them plain, and do not let them creep into your reading room in the guise of architectural piers and cornices.
“Alcoves oblige us to go twice as far as there is any need of. A large part of the books might as well have been stored in a compact stack.”—C. A. Cutter.[186]
“Privacy is marred when several readers occupy the same table.”—Fletcher.[187]
“The alcove plan, obsolete and incompatible with further progress.”—Bluemner.[188]