“There is no longer any pretence of using the selected style as a basis or point of departure to be modified and developed in accordance with American needs and ways of thinking, and with the introduction of new material and new modes of construction.... In civic buildings it may be said as a rule that there is no longer even an aspiration toward a national architecture.”
After discussing at length modern commercial buildings, Mr. Schuyler concludes with a sentence which may well be applied to libraries: “Out of the satisfaction of commonplace and general requirements may arise the beginnings of a national architecture.”
Will there ever be evolved a distinctive library architecture? I hardly think so. It will be possible to recognize a library as you can now tell a schoolhouse; but libraries if well planned will have more individualism, I think, more characteristic charm, than the generality of schoolhouses, but not a uniform architecture.
It is possible indeed that library loveliness will be developed as a recognizable type.
Amateurs Dangerous
In looking back on the experience of thirty years, I am inclined to think that most danger in library planning lies in amateur interference. Not so much in amateur librarians. When a trustee gets interested in library methods he often graduates into the profession, and becomes a leader. For instance, Justin Winsor, who began as a trustee, became a librarian, and by vigorous work did more to make his occupation a profession than any other one American. Even when the trustee stops short of this, he may sometimes worry his librarian by half-knowledge and undue interference in administration, but such a man is not apt to impede in building, for his library zeal will move him to support the practical side in any discussion.
But when a trustee (or, alas! a librarian) is an amateur architect, one of those laymen who spend an English vacation all in cathedral towns, and a French tour all in the château district, he is apt to be troublesome, and to want what he considers good style in architecture rather than good methods of administration. If he is put on the building committee, and it selects a too artistic architect, one who magnifies “Venustas” unduly at the cost of “Utilitas,” the library is doomed. Its new building may be widely pictured in the magazines, but it will not be so much used by readers, or praised by librarians. Better modest ignorance, with common-sense, than too much half-knowledge and pseudo-taste in art or architecture.