ABSTRACT
Public library design has been awarded a similarly upward trajectory – from a pre-modern indulgence in elaboration and monumentality at the expense of practicalities, to an over-riding concern in modern times, while claiming to retain aesthetic appeal, for function and machine-like efficiency. In public libraries also, books were the most convenient and visible ornamental device. The walls of the Birmingham Central Reference Library were, like the reading room of the British Museum, 'plastered' with books from top to bottom, a form of 'display' and a library-type inherited from the 'great hall' library of the renaissance. The aesthetic, monumental treatment that was given to many early public library buildings aimed to impress. One of the iconic examples of the library as 'machine' was the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in mid-town Manhattan, which opened in 1911. The library as 'machine' was no more the preserve of the twentieth-century than the library as 'monument' was the preserve of the nineteenth.
