Boston Public Library at Copley Square: What to See

The Boston Public Library's central building at Copley Square is free to enter, open to anyone, and one of the most beautiful interiors in the city. A remarkable number of residents have never been past the front desk.

Two buildings, one library

The central library is really two connected structures, and knowing the difference is the key to visiting it well.

The McKim Building, opened in 1895, is the grand one: a Renaissance revival palace built as a deliberate civic statement about public access to knowledge. The inscription on the façade about the commonwealth requiring the education of the people is not decoration; it is the argument the building was constructed to make, in stone, at considerable expense.

The Johnson Building next door is the modern addition, renovated in recent years into the busy, contemporary, genuinely-used-as-a-library half. This is where most of the circulating collection, the children's and teen spaces, and the daily activity live.

Most visitors want the McKim building and do not know to ask for it by name. Walking in the main entrance on Dartmouth Street puts you in the right place.

What to see inside the McKim building

Bates Hall, the main reading room, is the image most associated with the library: an enormous barrel-vaulted room, over two hundred feet long, with green-shaded lamps running down long oak tables. It is a working reading room, so people are studying in it. You are welcome, quietly.

The courtyard, an arcaded Italianate space open to the sky at the centre of the building, is one of the great public rooms in Boston and is almost always less crowded than it deserves. In warm weather you can sit there, and there is a café adjoining it.

The Sargent murals on the upper floor are a major cycle by John Singer Sargent, installed over decades, and rarely crowded. There are also murals by Puvis de Chavannes along the main staircase and an Edwin Austin Abbey cycle, which together make the building one of the more significant collections of mural painting in the country.

The staircase, the marble lions and the bronze doors are worth the time on their own, as is the ceiling work throughout.

What you can do there

Everything a library does. Read, work, use the wifi, use the collections, attend a programme. Free public events and exhibitions run regularly.

Massachusetts residents can get a library card, which extends to a substantial amount of digital borrowing, ebooks, audiobooks, films and databases, as well as physical material. If you live in the state and do not have one, you are leaving real value unclaimed. Some categories of non-resident access exist too.

Museum passes are available through the library system, which is the free-admission route to institutions that otherwise charge.

Research collections, including rare books, manuscripts, maps and prints, are held here with their own access procedures. The map collection in particular is a serious research resource with public exhibitions.

Practical notes

Check current hours before going, and note that the McKim and Johnson sections may not keep identical schedules. Sunday hours in particular vary seasonally, and the historic building sometimes closes earlier than the modern one.

Guided tours of the art and architecture are offered free and are a good use of an hour if you want context rather than a wander. They are led by volunteers who know the building well.

Getting there is easy: Copley on the Green Line and Back Bay on the Orange Line and commuter rail are both a short walk. Trinity Church is across the square, and the two make an easy pairing, with the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street just outside.

Bags and photography policies are reasonable, but the reading rooms are working spaces. Photograph the architecture, not the people studying.

Why it matters

This was the first large free municipal library in the United States, and the first to lend books to the public to take home, built on the proposition that a city should provide serious intellectual resources to everyone without charge.

In a city where a great many of the famous institutions are private, expensive, selective, or all three, the library remains genuinely and completely open. There is no ticket, no membership requirement to walk in, and nobody checks whether you belong.

Walk in. Sit in Bates Hall for twenty minutes. Nobody will ask you for anything.

The branches

The central library is the famous building, but the system runs branches across the city's neighbourhoods, several of them architecturally notable and all of them free.

For residents, the branches are the practical library: holds delivered from across the system, children's programming, meeting space, computer and internet access, and staff who know the neighbourhood. The system also participates in wider resource sharing, which means a card here reaches far more material than the shelves in front of you.

Programmes and exhibitions

The central library runs a continuous programme of author events, lectures, concerts, film screenings and exhibitions drawn from its own collections, almost all free and open to anyone.

The exhibitions in particular are worth checking before a visit, because the library's holdings of maps, prints, manuscripts and local history material produce shows that a general visitor would not expect from a lending library.

Studying and working there

Bates Hall is the famous reading room and it is a working one. There are quieter and less-photographed reading rooms elsewhere in the building for people who want to concentrate without a stream of visitors passing through.

The Johnson building has more contemporary study space, better power access and a more relaxed noise policy, which makes it the better choice for laptop work or for a conversation.

Wifi is free and open. There is no requirement to be a member to sit and work.

Copley Square around it

The square is one of the better urban spaces in the city, framed by the library, Trinity Church and the tower behind it, with the Boston Marathon finish line painted across Boylston Street a few steps away.

Trinity Church is open to visitors, with an admission charge, and the contrast between its interior and the library's is worth experiencing back to back. The Back Bay's residential streets behind the square are among the most intact Victorian districts in the country and make an easy walk afterwards.