Boston Public Library

George Ticknor, the famous Boston publisher, was the first one to propose the idea of a public library in 1826, but no one was interested. Eventually something got going, because Josiah Quincy, Jr., the mayor of Boston, donated start-up money in the amount of $5,000, and in 1852 public library was officially established in Boston.

The new library’s reading room opened on March 20, 1854, and its circulation department opened on May 2 of that same year. But it became very evident very quickly that the library’s 16,000 volumes weren’t going to fit in the Mason Street (think tucked behind Thinking Cup on Tremont) building that they originally planned the library to be housed in.

In 1854 they moved the library to a location on Boylston Street, but it quickly grew out of that building too, so they moved to another location on Boylston. In 1880, a larger, more massive building was commissioned from the New York architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White, and in 1888 construction began on the structure you see at Copley Square today. An addition to the building was later added in 1972.

Today, the Boston Public Library holds 22,484,000 books!