This video is a compilation of photographs, set to music, that I took of the Concord Free Library (Concord, MA), on September 2, 2023. I hope you enjoy. Be sure to watch in HD; the pictures are fuzzy without viewing in HD.
Concord Free Library (Concord, MA)
The citizens of Concord and their guests dedicated the Concord Free Public Library on Wednesday, October 1, 1873. Located at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road (the present 129 Main Street), the library was founded through the generosity and vision of William Munroe, a Concord native who made a fortune in dry goods and textiles and after retirement developed a desire to use his accumulated wealth to benefit the town where he had been born and raised. Munroe provided funds to construct the library building and masterminded the details of construction and operation. The institution he established - an amalgam of public and private funding and management - has ever since met the reading and information needs of local residents and visitors to Concord and served as a cornerstone of community life.
Munroe bought the major part of what would become the library lot from George Brooks in 1869. The house which then stood on the site (moved in 1872 to permit library construction) had been a prominent feature of Concord’s landscape for more than one hundred and thirty years. It was completely in keeping with the other white-painted New England style wooden houses in the neighborhood. The library erected on the site of the Brooks House was very different in style from any other Concord building at the time. William Munroe wanted a distinctive and impressive as well as a functional structure, and didn’t feel compelled to conform to a locally familiar style of architecture. Having solicited plans from several professionally respected architects, he chose the Boston firm of Snell and Gregerson to design the library.
Although it took some in town a little time to get used to Concord’s Gothic library, the opening of the new building and the expansion of collections and services that followed generated an enormous swell of community pride and support. Ralph Waldo Emerson himself delivered the keynote address at the library’s dedication on October 1, 1873, and served on its Library Committee. Throughout the 1870s, many Concordians and others gave freely from their personal collections to enrich the fledgling institution. By 1880, when George Bradford Bartlett’s Concord Guide Book was published, the Concord Free Public Library had become a local landmark and a must-see for visitors to the town, a recognized temple of New England culture.
Although the library has not grown exactly as its founder proposed, it has undergone multiple additions and renovations over the years. It was altered in 1889 (when a school building from Sudbury Road was annexed to the back); in 1917 (when the tower came down to permit the construction of stacks); in the early 1930s (a renovation by Frohman, Robb & Little, who both enlarged the building and radically changed the style of its exterior from Victorian Gothic to Georgian); in 1938; 1968; 1986 to 1990 (a renovation designed by Perry, Dean, Stahl, and Rogers); and most recently from 2003 to 2005 (under J. Stewart Roberts & Associates) - a largely systems-driven project that modernized and restored elegance to 129 Main Street. In addition, a separate facility for the West Concord Branch was dedicated in 1930.
Daniel Chester French and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Sculptures
Daniel Chester French's connection to Concord, Massachusetts is deeper than the fact that he lived and is buried there. While living in Concord, French was a neighbor of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founder of the "Transcendental" movement. The two became friends, so it was no surprise that French would be commissioned to create two sculptures of Emerson.
French's two sculptures of Emerson are in the Concord Free Library in Concord, Massachusetts. The first, a bust, was made in 1883/84 after a clay model made in 1879 when French was 29 years old. Emerson sat for the bust and is said to have commented, upon seeing it for the first time, "Dan, that's the face I shave." The bust can be found today in the reading room of the Concord Library.
In 1896, four years after Emerson's death, the town of Concord voted to erect a statue in memory of Emerson. The sculpture shows the seated Emerson in middle age in a pose reminiscent of French's statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. French's sculpture of Emerson is a centerpiece of the Concord Library.
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For this write up, I stole liberally from the following webpages:
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