My friend and I were wandering down State Street on a recent Saturday morning in Chicago and noticed an imposing building ahead on the right. Chicago has more imposing buildings than just about any city I have ever visited so that in itself was not so unusual, but atop this building were some of the larger gargoyles I had ever seen. I thought maybe we had wandered onto the set of the latest Batman movie currently filming in various locations around the city. But as we drew nearer I realized it was the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago's central public library. The building has a retro look, completed in 1991, which a library brochure describes as Beaux-arts inspired with Classical and popular styled ornamentation, that must mean huge gargoyles.
Inside are 9 public floors of library quiet, over one million impressively spent dollars of public art, 70 miles of shelving for books and materials, a breakout of high demand items in the Popular Library, a welcoming, brightly lit and colorful Children's Library, and each successive floor arranged by subject matter all accessed through a central escalator. A friendly staff person, one of many, suggested we continue up to the Winter Garden, "a place a lot of visitors like to see." How did she know? The room is spectacular, naturally lit by skylight, high ceilinged, spacious and sparsely furnished, and very quiet on a Saturday morning. It is a beautiful sancutary amidst the rumble of downtown Chicago.
The Harold Washington Library Center reinforces the idea that "great cities have great libraries."
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