Taunton Public Library is the public library of
Taunton, Massachusetts
Taunton is a city in and the county seat of Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. Taunton is situated on the Taunton River, which winds its way through the city on its way to Mount Hope Bay, to the south. As of the 2020 United States ...
. It is located at 12 Pleasant Street, in an architecturally distinguished Beaux Arts building built in 1903 with funding support from
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...
, to which a modern addition was made in 1979. The building is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
as a particularly fine local example of Beaux Arts architecture.
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Architecture and history
The Taunton Public Library is set on the south side of Pleasant Street, a short east–west road in the center of Taunton. It is set among a number of other civic and institutional buildings. The oldest portion of the building is a T-shaped masonry structure built out of Indiana limestone in 1903 to a Beaux Arts and Classical Revival design by Albert R. Ross. The leg of the T projects forward, creating a section three bays wide and one deep, with the main entrance at its center. The entrance is recessed within a round-arch opening, topped by a broken pediment and cartouche. The bays of the projecting section are divided by full-height Corinthian engaged columns, with Corinthian pilasters near the coroners. These support a multi-layer entablature, above which a dentillated cornice encircles the building below its truncated hip roof. Differing window sizes and shapes give variety to the structure. In 1979, a large addition brick-faced addition was added to the rear of the original building.[
The 1903 building's construction was made possible by a gift of $70,000 from industrialist and philanthropist ]Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...
. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1984.
Gallery
File:Taunton Public Library.jpg, Southeast corner view
File:Carnegie plaque at Taunton Public Library.jpg, Plaque on the library wall
See also
*
*List of Carnegie libraries in Massachusetts
The following list of Carnegie libraries in Massachusetts provides information on Carnegie public libraries in Massachusetts, where 43 of them were built from 1901 to 1917, funded by 35 grants totaling $1,137,500 and awarded by the Carnegie Corp ...
References
External links
Taunton Public Library
- official site
{{authority control
National Register of Historic Places in Taunton, Massachusetts
Library buildings completed in 1903
Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Libraries in Bristol County, Massachusetts
Public libraries in Massachusetts
Carnegie libraries in Massachusetts