City of Springfield
History of the Springfield City Library and the Springfield Museums on the Quadrangle |
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No visit to Springfield would be complete without a stop at the Quadrangle, the site of the Springfield City Library's main building and the Springfield Museums, the cultural heart of the city. The library and four museums are arranged around the tree-shaded Quadrangle green at the corner of State and Chestnut Streets. This outstanding cultural complex, termed "the People's College" by one of its earliest presidents, was completed in 1934.
Welcoming visitors to the entrance to the Quadrangle in Merrick Park at the corner of State and Chestnut streets stands Augustus Saint-Gaudens' statue of The Puritan. Placed at the Quadrangle in 1899, the statue memorializes Deacon Samuel Chapin, one of Springfield's earliest settlers.
The Springfield City Library
In the mid-1800s, a group of Springfield residents started a movement to establish a public library in the City. In 1855, 1,200 of the city's 1,300 residents signed a petition requesting funding for the library. The request was denied because City Hall had just been erected and the city coffers were low. Nevertheless, in 1857, two groups -- the Young Men's Literary Association and the Springfield Institute -- merged to form the City Library Association. Although the library was located in City Hall, it was privately funded through voluntary subscriptions until 1864, the same year it incorporated. The library soon outgrew its City Hall location, and, in 1871, $100,000 was raised to erect a building on the corner of State and Chestnut streets on land donated by George Bliss. In 1885, a city appropriation enabled the library to be free to all. 
The present Springfield Library building opened to the public on January 10, 1912. Designed by Edward L. Tilton, the building was funded by a $200,000 gift from legendary philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and by generous contributions from Springfield citizens. A bronze bust of Carnegie was placed in a prominent position between two columns in the Rotunda and remains there today.
The Italian Renaissance-style building gleams with granite, marble and terra cotta. The magnificent Rotunda, the library's grand center court, was said to be one of the finest parts of the building, with its stately Corinthian columns, balustrade, elaborate architectural details, and amber-tinted glass dome. The head of the ancient civic goddess Minerva adorns four shields beneath the dome. A frieze of horses and riders inspired by the bas relief ornamentation of the Parthenon graces the vestibule leading to the Rotunda from the State Street entrance. The Rotunda was restored to its original elegance in 1998 with a matching grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, the State Historic Register, and is part of a Historic District in the City of Springfield.
The library has strong collections in art, music and foreign languages, especially Spanish. An active children's department, periodicals room, busy reference department, Internet access, and new computer databases provide information and entertainment for all interests. Nine neighborhood branch libraries provide service to all areas of Springfield.
In 2004 the library system became part of Springfield's municipal government.
The Springfield Museums
From its inception, the broadly-phrased charter of the City Library Association encouraged varied collections: books, paintings, objects of scientific interest, maps and drawings, and sculpture. Then, in 1886, the Association was promised a vast collection of Asian decorative arts, American and Italian paintings, rugs and textiles -- all the products of years of collecting by George Walter Vincent Smith and his Springfield-born wife, Belle -- if the citizens raised money to build a separate art museum building. The George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, built in in 1895 in the style of an Italian villa, is the oldest building on the Quadrangle. The "Art Museum," as it was then called, was a distillation of Victorian taste, with grand gallery space, numerous classrooms, and, to house the "curiosities collection," a Hall of Ethnology.
Soon this science-based collection of curiosities had grown so large that a new building was constructed in 1899. Beginning as a museum of natural history, the new building ultimately was expanded to become the Springfield Science Museum. Visitors to the museum step into a world filled with the wonders of natural and physical science. The multi-level R.E. Phelon African Hall, dominated by a huge African elephant, reveals the diversity of the continent's wildlife and peoples. In Dinosaur Hall a full-sized replica of Tyrannosaurus rex towers over visitors. The Monsanto Eco-Center, an aquarium and live animal center, is home to a variety of fish, reptiles and amphibians in life-like habitats. In the Exploration Center, children and families are encouraged to unlock the mysteries of science, "hands-on." Habitat groupings of mounted animals, a 100-seat planetarium, Mineral Hall, a 1937 Springfield-built Gee Bee airplane, and Native American Indian artifacts fascinate children and adults alike. 
The Connecticut Valley Historical Society was a separate organization, although it held its meetings and housed its collections in the library building. By 1927, these collections, reflecting "natural, civil, military, literary, ecclesiastical and genealogical materials," had grown so large that the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum was constructed adjacent to the Science Museum. The stone Colonial Revival building houses artifacts and documents which tell the story of the region from 1636 to the present. Hand-crafted furniture, pewter, silver and portraits by itinerant artists capture over 300 years of Valley history. In the museum's Genealogy and Local History Library, the Ellis Island records, the Loiselle Index, over 30,000 genealogy books, 36,500 microforms, 40,000 photos and 2.5 million documents, including diaries, deeds, account books,and land transfer documents, attract researchers and family historians from around the country. "Project Shamrock," a database on Irish immigrants who lived in the Greater Springfield area between 1840 and 1900, is of special interest to local residents. In 1948, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum formally joined the Association.
Meanwhile, Dr. & Mrs. James Philip Gray left their entire estate for the "selection, purchase, preservation, and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic, and high class oil paintings obtainable," and for the construction of a suitable building to house the collections. The new Museum of Fine Arts opened to the public in 1933. The building is a fine example of 1930s Art Deco architecture. The visitor is immediately struck by Erastus Salisbury Field's massive Historical Monument of the American Republic. Significant works by Winslow Homer, Copley, Harnett, Remington and Sargent also distinguish the six galleries devoted to American art. Among the European art displayed in this museum are notable Italian baroque, Dutch and Flemish, and French collections which include works by Chardin, Boucher, Gericault, Millet, Courbet, Corot and Gérôme. The museum's Impressionist Gallery boasts works by Degas, Pissarro, Caillebotte and Gaugin, as well as a painting from Claude Monet's famous Haystack series. In the 20th-century gallery are paintings by George Bellows, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe and Lyonel Feininger. Modern sculptors include Alexander Calder, Richard Stankiewicz and George Sugarman.
All four museums were built with funds contributed by local residents. To reflect this growth, the City Library Association formally changed its named to the Springfield Library & Museums Association in 1958. In 2004 the governing structure changed, as the library system became part of Springfield's municipal government, and the museums became the Springfield Museums Association.
For more information, please call 413-263-6828, ext. 290.
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