The Cambridge Public Library in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

is part of the

Minuteman Library Network The Minuteman Library Network (MLN), founded in 1984, is a consortium of 41 public and academic libraries in the MetroWest and southern Middlesex County areas of eastern Massachusetts, US that share resources, patrons and services. The Network ha ...

. It consists of a main library and six branches, located throughout the city. Having developed from the Cambridge Athenaeum, the main library building was built in 1888, and was expanded and renovated in 2009. This expansion greatly increased the area of the building, more than tripling the square footage. In fiscal year 2014, the city of Cambridge spent 1.63% ($7,064,381) of its budget on the library, $66 per person.

Main building

Cambridge Public Library - Cambridge, MA - DSC00110

The main building of the Cambridge Public Library is an historic

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

building at 449 Broadway. It was built in 1888 with land and full construction funding donated by

Frederick H. Rindge Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857–1905) was an American business magnate, patriarch of the illustrious and prominent Rindge family, real estate developer, philanthropist, and writer, of Los Angeles, California. He was a major benefactor to his ...

, a Cambridge native and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

. Its

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

design was by

Van Brunt & Howe Henry Van Brunt FAIA (September 5, 1832 – April 8, 1903) was a 19th-century American architect and architectural writer. Life and work Van Brunt was born in Boston in 1832 to Gershom Jacques Van Brunt and Elizabeth Price Bradlee. Van Brunt ...

. The building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982. A $90 million expansion and renovation of the library, led by the Boston architectural firms William Rawn Associates and Ann Beha Architects, opened on November 8, 2009. The new addition more than tripled the square footage of the building, and is the first building in the US to make use of European Double-Skin Curtainwall technology. Architectural drawings and construction

photos A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...

are availabl
here
During most of the construction, the library collection had been relocated to the Longfellow School. The surrounding lawn of the main building is a popular meeting place for various interest groups, including pickup soccer,

slacklining Slacklining refers to the act of walking, running or balancing along a suspended length of flat webbing that is tensioned between two anchors. Slacklining is similar to slack rope walking and tightrope walking. Slacklines differ from tightwir ...

, book and religious study groups, casual picnics, and the traditional practice of various martial & therapeutic arts.

Museum of Science Community Solar System

Prior to the renovation of the main library, the library was home to a scale model of the

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

in the Boston Museum of Science's community-wide

solar system model Solar System models, especially mechanical models, called ''orreries'', that illustrate the relative positions and motions of the planets and Natural satellite, moons in the Solar System have been built for centuries. While they often showed rela ...

. Saturn was located just outside the portion of the building that housed the old stacks, roughly where the computer workstation sign-in table is currently located. The Saturn model was packed up and shipped back to the Museum of Science and was not positioned at the reopened renovated library. Other locations in Cambridge that still have models in the historic nine planet series are the Royal Sonesta Hotel (home of

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

) and the

CambridgeSide CambridgeSide (previously CambridgeSide Galleria) is an enclosed shopping mall in Cambridge, Massachusetts that opened in 1990. , the mall is anchored by TJ Maxx. Previous anchors include department stores Filene's, Lechmere, Macy's, Macy's Home ...

mall (home of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

History of organization

The Cambridge Public Library developed out of the Cambridge Athenaeum, which was founded in 1849 as "a lyceum, public library, and reading room with a building on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Pleasant Street where Cambridge residents could borrow books at the cost of one dollar per year. The City of Cambridge acquired the Cambridge Athenaeum in 1858 and renamed it the Dana Library for use as a city hall and a public library. By 1866 the Library moved to the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Temple Street. In 1874, the library became free to the public and was renamed the Cambridge Public. The main building of the Cambridge Public Library at 449 Broadway was built in 1888.

Branches

Six smaller neighborhood branch libraries are scattered throughout the City of Cambridge. These are: *Boudreau Branch, 245 Concord Avenue, West Cambridge *Central Square Branch, 45 Pearl Street, Cambridgeport *Collins Branch, 64 Aberdeen Avenue, West Cambridge *O'Connell Branch, 48 Sixth Street, East Cambridge *O'Neill Branch, 70 Rindge Avenue, North Cambridge *Valente Branch, 826 Cambridge Street, East Cambridge

References

External links

Cambridge Public Library Website

{{Authority control Library buildings completed in 1888 Public libraries in Massachusetts Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Cambridge, Massachusetts Libraries in Middlesex County, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Cambridge, Massachusetts