Description

Project description from KMW firm website:

"The library is a part of an urban composition which links the existing neo-Georgian City Hall, the Library and Olmstead Park into a single, interrelated administrative and culture complex.

The building is entered from a fore-court facing the pond, and across a small footbridge from a parking lot. A spacious lobby joins the two entrances to the circulation desk and the Reference Hall.

The three-story library is grouped around the triple height clerestory-lit Reference Hall which is surrounded at its upper levels by carrels and extends to an apsidal reader’s space which on 3 levels overlooks a picturesque cemetery. Readers find themselves never remote from views of the central hall or the surrounding landscape of the park.

At the ground level there is a Children’s Library, the Reference Hall, a community multi-purpose hall, exhibition space and staff support space, at the upper levels readers’ spaces and audio-visual department. An oval staircase connects the front lobby with all the levels and a central staircase at the interior of the library makes for vertical connection."

Awards:

- 1994 AIA New England Honor Award for Architecture

Publications:

- The Boston Globe, December 2003

- Progressive Architecture, April 1994

- The Boston Globe, November 1991

- The Boston Globe, October 1991

- The Boston Globe, September 1991