American Libraries 1730-1950 (Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks)

An expansive overview of our storehouses of knowledge, from the earliest library building (Philadelphia, 1745) to midcentury modern and beyond.

Although new technologies appear poised to alter it, the library remains a powerful site for discovery, and its form is still determined by the geometry of the book and the architectural spaces devised to store and display it. American Libraries provides a history and panorama of these much-loved structures, inside and out, encompassing the small personal collection, the vast university library, and everything in between.

Through 500 photographs and plans selected from the encyclopedic collections of the Library of Congress, Kenneth Breisch traces the development of libraries in the United States, from roots in such iconic examples as the British Library and Paris’s Bibliothèque-Ste.-Geneviève to institutions imbued with their own American mythology. Starting with the private collections of wealthy merchants and landowners during the eighteenth century, the book looks at the Library of Congress, large and small public libraries, and the Carnegie libraries, and it ends with a glimpse of modern masterworks.

850 illustrations

Kenneth Breisch directs the historic preservation program at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous publications on American architectural history, especially in the areas of library design and vernacular building. He lives in Santa Monica.