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Branford's
James Blackstone
Memorial Library
by Peter Borgemeister
“Come back and sit down,
Hammer; I’ll pay for the whole thing!” commanded Timothy
Blackstone to Alfred Hammer, and the James Blackstone
Memorial Library was born.
Until that
day in 1890 or 1891, Branford did not have a permanent
public library. John Carr, in his history of Branford
written for the State’s 300th birthday, said
that two libraries had been started, but they didn’t
last.
Towards the
end of the nineteenth century, Branford had grown to
5,ooo people, and the need for a public library in
Branford became apparent. A committee was formed in 1890
to solicit funds. Chaired by the Reverend Melville K.
Bailey of Trinity Church, it contained three other
prominent Branford people; Dr. Charles W. Gaylord,
Lester J. Nichols and Alfred Hammer, of M.I.F., out to
Chicago to talk to Timothy Blackstone. Born in Branford,
Blackstone had left for Chicago where he became an
eminently successful railroad magnate, rising to the
presidency of the Chicago and Alton Railroa d.
Timothy was
the son of James Blackstone who was born in Branford in
1793; James had been first selectman of Branford, a
captain in the Connecticut militia and served in both
the Senate and House of the Connecticut General
Assembly. The story of the episode in Blackstone’s
office has been told this way; “Mr. Blackstone was
extremely busy and didn’t seem very interested. Mr.
Hammer rose to leave. Timothy Blackstone ordered him to
come back and sit down, and he declared that he would
pay for the whole thing.”
 Timothy
Blackstone must have harbored a great love and respect
for his father. He said “nothing shall be wanting in its
(the library’s) completeness and that it should be at
the same time, a worthy memorial to my father, whose
name it bears.”
Blackstone
commissioned an eminent Chicago architect, S. S. Beman
to design the building. Beman set about to design the
library in “the purest Grecian Ionic style; the
architectural details being taken from the beautiful
Erechtheum of the Athenian Acropolis.”
The exterior
of the building is of light-tone Tennessee marble. The
“footprint”, or plan, approximates the form of a Latin
cross. At the top of the marble entrance stairway and
beyond the spacious marble vestibule are t wo highly
decorated entrance doors of pure bronze, each weighing
nearly 2000 pounds. A classic rotunda, octagonal in
shape, 44 feet in diameter and 50 feet high, is just
inside the doors. A reading room leads to the right. At
the end of the room is a large fireplace over which
hangs a life size portrait of James Blackstone. Office
space and book stacks fill the winf to the left. A
hallway directly opposite the entrance doors leads to an
assembly hall. Featuring solid oak wainscoting 16 feet
high and a highly textured elliptical ceiling, the
auditorium is renowned for fine acoustics.
Architect Beman commissioned artist Oliver Dennet Grover of
Chicago to produce eight large paintings illustrating
the evolution of book-making from the gathering of
papyrus to the then current method of book binding.
Beneath these paintings are portraits of famous
authors. This art work adorns the interior surfaces of
the rotunda’s domed roof, topped by a delicately
detailed skylight.
The library
was dedicated on June 16, 1896 in a lavish ceremony that
included speeches, prayers and songs by children’s
chorus. Timothy Blackstone, the donor, chose not to be
present, fearing that his presence would detract from
the memory of his father, for whom it was built.
The magnificence of this building so
impressed a reporter rom the Boston Herald that he
started his story with “In a very plain village in
Connecticut by the sea, nine miles east of New Haven; in
a lonesome little town called Branford, which has a
malleable iron factory, a lock shop, a quarry and miles
of farm patches that produce annually 50,000 quarts of
strawberries for the Boston market, there is a public
library that cost nearly $600,000!”
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