Building History

The Woburn Public Library has been a prominent fixture in the community since 1879 thanks to a generous gift by the Winn Family. In 1853, Jonathan Bowers Winn, a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in Boston, heard of Boston's Plan for a Free Public Library. At his local town meeting he proposed that the town match his delegate's salary of $300 to start a free circulating library in Woburn. In 1856, the first free library opened in the Town Hall. The successes of the library lead Charles Bower Winn, the son of Jonathan Winn, to bequeath $140,000 to build the library as we know it today.

Charles Bowers Winn intended the new library to be "an architectural ornament to the town." He requested a competition for what he hoped would be the best library design in America. In 1877, Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886) won the competition, and his design for a landmark alcove library won immediate international acclaim. The construction contractor was Norcross Brothers of Worcester, Massachusetts, a firm whose meticulous craftsmanship Richardson deployed for Trinity Church, Boston, and for many of his other buildings.

The dramatic exterior of red Longmeadow and cream-colored Ohio sandstone and the picturesque massing of towers is a signature example of an architectural style which became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. The Welsh carver, John Evans, embellished the facade with profuse carvings based on medieval and botanical motifs which visually proclaim the library's original function, not only as a home for books, but also as a gallery for art and a venue for the study of natural history.

The fluidity of the interior spaces, organized along a main axis reflecting the Beaux-Arts principles in which Richardson was trained, is awe-inspiring with its variety of intersecting curves. And yet, the procession from the octagonal Natural History Museum through the Reading Room culminates in an intimate inglenook with its hooded fireplace.

The Woburn Library as conceived and executed by Richardson clearly exceeded the donor's goal of providing a beautiful and functional public building for the town and offers a legacy of public library design which has had an impact on the entire corpus of American architecture.

Kenneth A. Breisch, Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).

Kathleen Curran, The Romanesque Revival. Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).

Leonard K. Eaton, American Architecture Comes of Age. European Reaction to H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1972).

Margaret Henderson Floyd, Henry Hobson Richardson. A Genius for Architecture (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1997).

_____. Architecture after Richardson: Regionalism before ModernismÑLongfellow, Alden, and Harlow in Boston and Pittsburgh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, 1994).

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The Architecture of H.H. Richardson and His Times rev. ed. (1961; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966; 1st edition published in 1936).

Paul C. Larson and Susan M. Brown, eds., The Spirit of H.H. Richardson on the Midland Prairies: Regional Transformations of an Architectural Style (Minneapolis: University Art Museum, Univesity of Minnesota; Ames Iowa State University Press, 1988).

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, H.H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982).

Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and Dennis Alan Anderson, Distant Corner. Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H.H. Richardson (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003).

_____. Living Architecture: A Biography of H.H. Richardson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).

_____. Three American Architects. Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, 1865-1915 (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991).

_____. H.H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

_____. H.H. Richardson and His Office: A Centennial of His Move to Boston, 1874: Selected Drawings (Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Harvard college Library, 1974).

Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888).