natural light. In winter, when the temperature outside is well below freezing even in the middle of the day, these libraries can be very cold indeed. Just as they were not lit, they were not heated. Visitors often wonder how anyone could work in such conditions and the answer is that they didn’t. The monks using these libraries made an appointment with the librarian and collected their books, taking them back to their cells, where they could read them in comfort, huddled close to the stove. The libraries themselves remained unlit and unheated and, for the most part, locked up. There were only the occasional indications of lighting in this period. There seem, for example, to have been wall mounted oil lamps in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library (1766) already referred to in the 18th century and in the library of the Mafra National Palace (1771) in Portugal, but these seem to have been exceptions rather than the rule. Artificial lighting and heating only seriously started to appear in the 19th century. The great advance was the invention of gas lighting. Gas street lamps were used in Paris in the 1820s, but it was not until the 1850s that gas lighting became relatively common. Its huge advantage was cost: gas lighting was 75% cheaper than its equivalents and comparatively much safer. It was fitted in the library of the Assemblée Nationale (183047) in Paris, which also boasted a set of fireplaces in the centre of the room with ingenious concealed flues. The use of gas was also an important factor in the design of one of the most celebrated libraries of the period, the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (1850). The brief for the building required the use of iron because of the perceived increased risk of fire. In response the architect, Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) produced a dramatic reading room covered by huge iron arches that looked more like a railway station than a library. The rest of the 19th century saw an increase in the use of both iron and gas lighting in libraries. The greatest advantage of gas lighting was that library opening hours were no longer as restricted. The greatest 19th century libraries exploited this combination of gas and iron to spectacular effect. In America a series of libraries were built with multi-storey iron stacks ranged around central halls. The first was the Astor Library in New York which opened in 1854. The best surviving example is the Peabody Library in Baltimore completed in 1878 and designed by the little known architect Edmund Lind. Here, five storeys of books wrap around a great hall lit by a glazed roof and gaslights mounted on the walls. It remains one of the most impressive libraries ever built, although seldom visited. Despite these innovations, when the British Library’s great Round Reading Room was completed in 1850, it was still entirely naturally lit, and the great iron stacks that surrounded it were lit from above through glass Top left: The George Peabody Library, 1866, Baltimore, United States Designed by Edmund Lind, this is the finest surviving example of an iron-stack library, a type peculiar to the United States in the 19th century.
Bottom left: University Library, 1842, Cambridge By the 19th century the rooms housing the University Library at Cambridge were wholly inadequate. After a series of competitions, Charles Robert Cockerell’s design was chosen. The main library is a long, barrel-vaulted room.
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