"The People's Palace”
INTERIOR The walls and stairs are of pure Carrara marble of the grade used by sculptors since Michelangelo from Tuscany region in Italy. Medallions of a rare, darkgreen marble from Connemara, Ireland, are set into the balustrades. The domes of stained glass are said to be two of the largest in the United States. Inscriptions, decorative patterns, and printers’ symbols forty one accent the mosaic walls. The type of mosaic design used here is called cosmati work—a craft originating in Italy during the Middle Ages, whereby glass, stone, and other colorful and reflective materials are inlaid in white Cosmati: Latin marble and set on angled surfaces with slight irregularities so as to increase their brilliance in the light. Cosmati work is meaning “made by hand” also characterized by geometric patterns reflecting Arab influence. The mosaics were designed by Robert C. Spencer and executed by J. A. Holzer, formerly of the Tiffany Studios, who had also completed the mosaics in the Marquette Building at about the same time. (Note that some sources refer to the mosaics having been done by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company of New York, but designed by Charles Coolidge, the design architect of the building and the overall decoration.) The scheme of decoration was adopted for practical reasons; it was thought that murals would soon have been hidden or rubbed off owing to soot-laden air from the Illinois Central Railroad.
CONNEMARA GREEN MARBLE INSET CARRARA MARBLE BALUSTRADES FROM TUSCANY
By the 1960s, talk of a new library building became serious. Private developers offered land to the city in exchange for the library’s Michigan Avenue address, but a binding 1839 U.S. War Department document was discovered, stating that the site could be used only for public purposes. Renovation of the existing building was considered. By the 1970s, plans called for renovating the existing edifice and building a new library. The first renovation was by Holabird & Root in 1972. The firm again renovated and modernized the building into a library and cultural center in a four-year project ending in 1977. The project cost about $12 million. Twenty percent of the space was dedicated to cultural activities. In 1980, Mayor Jane Byrne abandoned plans to build a new library next to the Cultural Center. Later, Mayor Harold Washington favored a new structure on a different site. A 1988 competition produced the design for the current central library located on South State Street.
Chicago Cultural Center
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