Boston Public Library

Boston Public Library is a municipal library institution whose history includes two major nineteenth-century cornerstone ceremonies. Proceedings on the Occasion of Laying the Corner-Stone of the New Library Building of Boston records the later event, held on November 28, 1888, for the Copley Square building. Printed by order of the City Council in 1889, the memorial volume gathers official proceedings, speeches, and poems, including work by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The building project marked a new stage for an institution founded in the 1850s and already established as a free public library. The book also documents the civic meaning attached to library architecture, public access, and the growth of Boston’s collections. Its institutional credit is appropriate because the volume represents an official record rather than the perspective of one biographer. Proceedings on the Occasion of Laying the Corner-Stone of the New Library Building of Boston preserves how the library and city presented that project to contemporary residents.