The Chicago Public Library

I have a confession to make, one that perhaps I shouldn't be admitting so early on in my blogging career, since I will surely be pegged as a nerd, but, here it is: I tear up in libraries. Yes, the thought of all that knowledge moves me that much - and it's not because I am simply standing around, bored in a library. I just love books, knowledge, research; and, for the record, it's not just any old library that gets the waterworks flowing. No, it has to be a pretty impressive library. I teared up in the British Museum Library, and when I said goodbye to the nationally-ranked research library at my alma mater... (there is an implied etcetera, etcetera there...) Similarly, when I made my way to the 7th floor of the downtown Chicago Public Library, I got a little misty-eyed.

The Harold Washington Public Library, built in 1989, was the third to house the city's collection of books. After the Great Fire of 1871, about 8,000 books, donated by the English as a gesture of sympathy, were housed in a water tank that had survived the fire. In 1897 the library moved more permanently to a beautiful building on Michigan Avenue, between Washington and Randolph streets. That building, now the Chicago Cultural Center, was designed by the renowned firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (fun fact: these three guys, both products and main characters of one of the most storied architectural lineages any city can boast of, were later commissioned to design the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the campus of Stanford!)

The library system expanded for the next 100 years or so, adding branch after branch in the city proper and flinging beautiful, stately branches out in the suburbs - like the Blackstone Memorial Library {1904}, which still stands and is shared by the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhoods.

The central branch eventually outgrew its home and was relocated to the first building pictured, a nine-floor and one-and-a-half-block haven of knowledge on South State Street. It is dedicated to Mayor Harold Washington, who passed away the year the library was authorized to be built, and has everything a good library should: an immense foreign-language section, tons of world newspapers, acres of fiction and non-fiction, medical texts, business tomes, art books, even an 11,000 square foot "Popular Library," which offers only books published within the last two years. It's easy for anyone with a penchant toward books to get lost in there...

The Harold Washington Public Library
400 South State Street
M-Th : 9AM to 9PM
Fr & Sat : 9AM to 5PM
Sun : 1PM to 5PM

Photo credits:
1) Carol M. Highsmith at http://blog.aia.org/favorites/2007/02/85_harold_washington_library_c.html
2) http://chicagopc.info/misc_buildings.htm