 |
| Photo by Sally McCay at Boston.com |
When I started searching for the history of the Billings Memorial Library at UVM I was annoyed by all the links that popped up about Billings, Montana. Didn’t Google know I was looking for a H.H. Richardson Library in Burlington, VT that had nothing do do with Montana? As usual, Google did know, was a million steps ahead of me and set me to work reading. Turns out native Vermonter Frederick Billings, who funded the H.H. Richardson Billings Library, was the also the namesake for Billings, Montana. He made his fortune as a lawyer in California, during the gold rush, when he became San Francisco’s first land claims lawyer. This guy moved around a lot by mid-1800s standards.
Frederick Billings had gotten his fill of California by 1869 and decided to return home to Vermont to purchase the estate of George Perkins Marsh. He was very interested in the ecology ideas from Marsh’s book, Man and Nature, and began buying land around his farm and reforesting it. Billings also made the excellent financial decision to purchase one of the original interests in the Northern Pacific Railway and he later became its president. At the end of the line a town was created and named after railroad’s president: Billings, M.T. (it was later nicknamed the “Magic City” due to its rapid expansion).
Meanwhile, Billings was back in Vermont making plans to build a library for his alma mater, The University of Vermont. His project began with the purchase of George Marsh’s 12,000 volume library (I guess it didn’t come with the house) and then moved on to building a place to put them in. According to the UVM website, Billings didn’t care for any of the library architects he interviewed until he found out that Richardson had designed the Woburn Library. Billings wanted a library for UVM just like Woburn. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the budget for such an enormous undertaking and began making drastic cuts in the materials, ornamentation and design of the building as it was being constructed. Even though he was out of money, Billings had plenty to complain about and did so with great vigor. When Richardson died suddenly in 1886, Billings wasted no time hiring Richardson’s firm, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, to make the changes he wanted (including a separate room for the the Marsh Collection).
The Billings Library suffered from many of the same problems as the Newberry - although beautiful, it lacked book stacks which made it very difficult to expand with a growing community. Actually, Frederick Billings and William Poole may have been seperated at birth - opinionated and cantankerous. The Billings Library quickly filled to capacity and then to bursting. But still it managed to limp along until the 1950s when the situation was unmanageable. The University made plans for a four story addition on the back of Richardson’s original masterpiece. The addition would have expanded the space by 60,000 square feet and added 825 new seats. Then plans were suddenly changed in 1961 when the University decided t0 build a new library, The Gus W. Bailey Library.
My heart goes out to the Billings Library because it seems that it was never fully appreciated. From the minute it was built someone wanted to change it - it never seemed to live up to expectations. In 1984 the University did expand the library and connected it to the Ira Allen Chapel to create a student center. The basement was reworked to included a full service dining hall but what students really wanted was a bowling alley and 1500 seat theater.
The Billings Library is a grand old gentlemen that should be valued for its history, not trussed up and expected to perform like a teenager. I can see why historians consider The Billings Library to be a stepsister of the Richardson library family in Massachusetts - it never got the respect or love it deserved.
Frederick Billings had gotten his fill of California by 1869 and decided to return home to Vermont to purchase the estate of George Perkins Marsh. He was very interested in the ecology ideas from Marsh’s book, Man and Nature, and began buying land around his farm and reforesting it. Billings also made the excellent financial decision to purchase one of the original interests in the Northern Pacific Railway and he later became its president. At the end of the line a town was created and named after railroad’s president: Billings, M.T. (it was later nicknamed the “Magic City” due to its rapid expansion).
Meanwhile, Billings was back in Vermont making plans to build a library for his alma mater, The University of Vermont. His project began with the purchase of George Marsh’s 12,000 volume library (I guess it didn’t come with the house) and then moved on to building a place to put them in. According to the UVM website, Billings didn’t care for any of the library architects he interviewed until he found out that Richardson had designed the Woburn Library. Billings wanted a library for UVM just like Woburn. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the budget for such an enormous undertaking and began making drastic cuts in the materials, ornamentation and design of the building as it was being constructed. Even though he was out of money, Billings had plenty to complain about and did so with great vigor. When Richardson died suddenly in 1886, Billings wasted no time hiring Richardson’s firm, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, to make the changes he wanted (including a separate room for the the Marsh Collection).
The Billings Library suffered from many of the same problems as the Newberry - although beautiful, it lacked book stacks which made it very difficult to expand with a growing community. Actually, Frederick Billings and William Poole may have been seperated at birth - opinionated and cantankerous. The Billings Library quickly filled to capacity and then to bursting. But still it managed to limp along until the 1950s when the situation was unmanageable. The University made plans for a four story addition on the back of Richardson’s original masterpiece. The addition would have expanded the space by 60,000 square feet and added 825 new seats. Then plans were suddenly changed in 1961 when the University decided t0 build a new library, The Gus W. Bailey Library.
My heart goes out to the Billings Library because it seems that it was never fully appreciated. From the minute it was built someone wanted to change it - it never seemed to live up to expectations. In 1984 the University did expand the library and connected it to the Ira Allen Chapel to create a student center. The basement was reworked to included a full service dining hall but what students really wanted was a bowling alley and 1500 seat theater.
The Billings Library is a grand old gentlemen that should be valued for its history, not trussed up and expected to perform like a teenager. I can see why historians consider The Billings Library to be a stepsister of the Richardson library family in Massachusetts - it never got the respect or love it deserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment