My wife Kathy and I arrived in Malden, MA, north of Boston to visit our daughter Kim and son-in-law Jason in their new home on Saturday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. Kim and Jason had hoped to take me to take me on a library visit to the main Boston Public Library over the weekend. But we discovered it was closed on Sunday and Monday. So we made a late afternoon visit to the Malden Public Library instead (visit on Saturday, May 25). The photo above shows Kathy and Kim at the entrance to the library’s 1996 addition, which is attached to the original Converse Memorial Library Building on Salem St. in Malden.
According to a book Kathy was reading on early Malden history, the original building was built in 1885 as a gift from Malden’s first mayor, Elisha S. Converse and his wife Mary as a memorial to their eldest son, Frank. Frank was murdered in 1863 during a robbery of the Malden Bank, the first bank robbery/murder in US history. The building was the last library designed by noted architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It is in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, and the courtyard garden was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (who designed the grounds of New York City’s Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC). Below are some details of the building exterior.
Unfortunately, the original building was closed for the day, so we were not able to see any of the interior which now houses history collections and art galleries and is used for public events. Below are a couple of views I found on the internet. The original main library room is is 50 x 36 feet and finished in elaborately carved white oak with a high, vaulted ceiling. Its furniture was designed by Richardson as well. (I found the pictures below on the internet.)
The entrance to the 1996 addition is off Park St. and opens to a hallway connecting the two buildings. A sign indicates there are three levels to the library. The most striking feature of the library is the large open two-story reading room space with book shelves on two levels all around. The space is well lit by sky lights in the ceiling. I loved the sense of being surrounded by books. (The history book says the addition houses more than 220,000 books.)
On the main level just inside the entrance near the main circulation desk there are numerous shelves for recorded media as well as a very nice display highlighting Asian American writers.
At the far end of the large room is reading/study with lots of windows toward the street and a large space for teens and young adults with tables, chairs, and shelves of teen and Y/A books.
At the other end of the room is the Reference area along with shelves for magazines and newspapers, and upstairs on the second level are the fiction book shelves and a very large Children’s Room. The Children’s Room seemed to be just packed with books, but there are also open spaces for activities and storytelling.
The Quiet Study room is also on this level, but the only photo I got was from the outside because the door was shut and the room was filled with people.
From the Children's Room I proceeded to the fiction shelves to do some browsing, but not before stopping to take in the impressive view from above of the reading room space.
There were multiple shelves of mysteries and science fiction among the fiction shelves, and I spent some time searching out books to recommend to my daughter. The view below looking down on the reading room shows the windows of the Children’s Room across the way, some of the computers at one end of the room below, and the main circulation desk.
A quick visit with Kim to the lower level of the library revealed the area devoted to nonfiction book stacks and a strict notice: “This stack area is not a reading room. Please take books upstairs.”
I’d kept an eye out for inviting places to sit and read, and I did find a couple I particularly liked on the second level—especially at the street end of the room with all the windows looking out into the upper branches of the trees. I did note that nearly all the chairs in the library were hard wooden chairs and wondered with a smile if that was a Puritan New England thing.
However, we didn’t plan on sitting and reading for an extended time on this visit—first because we knew the library would be closing soon but even more because we were planning to head around the corner for dinner at Kim & Jason’s favorite local pub, Hugh O’Neill’s Restaurant & Irish Pub. That is exactly what we proceeded to do after Kim and Jason checked out the books they’d found—including the early Malden history I noted above. (The two photos below are not mine, but I include them to convey the sense of this local Irish pub.)
We started dinner off with poutine as an appetizer, and everyone really enjoyed their meal. I had an amazing cup of New England Clam Chowder and a good Cubano Sandwich. But the highlight of the evening was the Irish music provided by a group of local people gathered around a nearby table in a traditional Irish seisiún (or session), with various people playing two guitars, a fiddle, a bodhrán, and a tin whistle. I took the photo with the display card in the foreground, and the other photo is a publicity photo showing the musicians at the same table. (We’d have been off to the left.) If you are unfamiliar with poutine, note the picture at the bottom of melted cheese curds with gravy over french fries.
We had a wonderful visit to the Malden Public Library. On Sunday we went to the John F. Kennedy Museum and Library (but we didn’t get into the library part). Then we had dinner at Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse across the street from the the Boston Public Library. But I’ll have to save a visit to see the inside of the library for a future trip to the Boston area. (Two photos of the Boston Public Library below.)
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