Must-See RVA! — Richmond Public Libary

101 East Franklin Street
Built, 1930
Expanded, 1972
Architects, Baskervill & Son

Like the Maya of old did to El Castillo, Richmond enclosed an old structure within a new one.

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A notable milestone in Richmond’s history was the acquisition in 1924 of the city’s first free library, in the modern sense. Richmond was the last city of its size in the country to build and operate such an institution.

Andrew Carnegie offered the city $100,000 in 1901 for a public library open to all, if the municipality would provide $10,000 a year for maintenance. Richmond did not accept the offer. Many Richmonders apparently felt that a library was a luxury, and that other public services were more essential.

(Library of Virginia) 1956

The city was again indifferent to the need in 1922 when an ordinance was introduced appropriating $350,000 for a library, accompanied by a petition bearing 10,000 signatures. the Council too the view that there were “more important demands for funds.”

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But there was now a large, well-organized, determined block of citizens who had formed the Richmond Library Association… (and) the Richmond-First Club and other agencies joined the fight. The almost immediate result was that the Council approved a $200,000 bond issue. In 1924 the Lewis Ginter mansion at Shafer and Franklin was bought for $112,000. The city’s first public library opened there in the fall of that year.

May 2016 – Dooley Wing interior

The Ginter mansion was not well-suited to the needs of a modern library, but it was far superior to anything the city had had in the past. Operations there had hardly gotten under way when Mrs. James H. Dooley died and left $500,000 to the city for the erection of a public library in memory of her husband. First and Franklin was chosen as the site, and the work was begun. The new Dooley Memorial Library opened in 1930, and provided much more adequate service that had ever been provided before. [RSOC]

May 2016 – Dooley Wing stairwell

Skip forward fifty years, and the Dooley was maxed out. In the 1972 expansion, core features were retained, but the original Art Deco design vanished.

While the exterior has disappeared entirely beneath the modern stone veneer, the original skylighted entrance hall remains as the lobby of the Art and Music section. The travertine walls and plaster ceiling of this room are still impressive.

The current building was intended to relate to Linden Row and is thus monumental and symmetrical. [ADR]

Both Architecture Richmond and The Shockoe Examiner also have interesting articles on the Library worth peeping at.

Sources

• [ADR] Architecture in Downtown Richmond. Robert Winthrop. 1982.
• (Library of Virginia) 1956.
• [RSOC] Richmond, The Story of a City. Virginius Dabney. 1976.

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