Page 9 - A_View_Of_Their_Own_the_Story_of_Westmount

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The Jubilee Gem of 1899
to 7,716 in only three years. Housing expanded up
the mountainside and there were great schemes for
"street railway" service up the hill. Residents
complained about reckless carriage drivers.
They petitioned for water and drainage systems
and continually sought to repair bridges that
crossed the ravine running through wooded
Westmount Park.
In this setting then, on June 7, 1897,
Councillor William Douw Lighthall steered a
motion through Council to build and stock
"a free public library" as recommended by the
permanent memorial subcommittee of the General
Committee of Citizens. To be erected on a site of
10,000 square feet in the park, it would be
financed by the $13,000 windfall the Town had
obtained two years earlier in a court case against
the Coates Gas Company for failing to provide
contracted services.
A library by-law adopted by council on October
4 was submitted to property owners at a special
public meeting on October 18 at 10 o'clock in the
morning. It was unanimously accepted, no one
demanding a poll or vote as was customary for
large expenditures.
In January 1898, a library committee of trustees
was established composed of three elected mem-
bers, three members of council and the mayor,
James R. Walker, a member ex-officio.
With less than 18 months before the library
would open, Robert Findlay was named architect.
A native Scot and Westmount resident, Findlay had
already designed the Sun Life Assurance Building at
Dominion Square and would soon be called on to
design Westmount Hall (the forerunner of Victoria
Hall) and later, with his. son Frank, Westmount
City Hall.
Mr. Gould, of McGill University's Redpath
Library, provided vital advice and offered designs of
libraries in New England. There, the concept of
small town libraries was already entrenched and
about to be emulated throughout America by
funding from the Carnegie Trust.
Councillor J.H. Redfem visited libraries in the
Boston area and the Westmount planners embraced
the ideas he brought back. Most bore the typical
features of architect Henry Hobson Richardson:
an arched entrance topped by a gabled roof and
peaked tower. One of five Richardson designs
contained in a report by the Connecticut Public
Robert Findlay
Library Committee of 1895 and 1896 was originally
proposed for Westmount.
The final design would reflect the Richardson
influence as well as Findlay's neoclassical back-
ground and the functional input of librarian Gould.
Interesting was a controversy surrounding the
five Richardson designs. Librarians generally
opposed his cozy reading rooms and alcoves,
light chairs and small tables. Elizabeth Hanson, in
Librariesand Culture
(Spring 1988), says the dispute
prompted renowned librarian Charles A. Cutter, of
the Forbes Institute in Northampton, Mass., to
declare: "I think from our experience of architects'
plans that we can safely say the architect is the
natural enemy of the librarian." History would seem
to repeat itself during the design debate that would
plague Westmount's Library Renewal Project
decades later.
One of Findlay's first designs for the West-
mount library, showing four wings and a rotunda,
proved to be too grandiose a scheme for the library
committee. Many designs later, the library commit-
tee approved a final set on June 1, 1898, only to
have the tenders come in over budget at $10,200.
The plan featured three reading rooms: one each for
men, "ladies" and children. It had to be revised
leading to elimination of the children's library
which, it was noted, could be added later.