History of the McKim Building: Bates Hall

Bates Hall is the main reading room in the McKim Building at the Boston Public Library. Bates Hall is named for the library's first great benefactor, Joshua Bates (1788-1864). Occupying the whole front of the building on the second floor level and lighted by high arched windows, it is 218 long, 42 feet wide, and 50 feet high, to the top of its barrel vaulted ceiling and created from Ohio sandstone. The form of Bates Hall recalls a Roman basilica and a series of robust double coffers in the ceiling provide a sculptural canopy to the room. The east side has a rhythmic series of arched windows with light buffered by wide overhanging hood on the exterior. Heavy deep green silk velvet drapery installed in 1888, and again in the 1920s and 1950s, was not recreated in the 1993 restoration of the room. The drapery helped to muffle sound and lower light levels.

The busts around the sides are those of prominent Americans, and cut in the frieze between the arches on a level with the cornices are the names of some of the world's greatest men. Oak bookcases line the walls. Over the center door, the carved balcony of Indiana limestone is suggestive of that in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. The doorways at either end have green serpentine Corinthian columns with bronze caps and entablatures of Belgian black marble.