Madison Public Library

About this property

The Madison Public Library is located at 12 Old Point Avenue in Madison, Maine. Built with funding support from Andrew Carnegie, it is one of the architecturally most unusual libraries in the state, with a distinctive octagonal tower and non-rectangular angled elements. It was designed by the local firm of Snow and Humphreys and completed in 1906. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. The library is set at the southeast corner of Old Point Avenue and Pleasant Street, near the center of the main village of Madison. It is a single-story structure built of brick and stone, with Classical Revival features. The building is roughly triangular in shape, with two rectangular sections joined by an angled main facade that faces the street corner. The rectangular sections have standing-seam metal hip roofs, interrupted at the center by an octagonal tower, whose front-facing sections have diamond-pane windows, and which is encircled by a band of decorative brick corbelling. The front facade has a recessed entry section with stone columns and brick pilasters flanking, and a band of corbelled brickwork below a stone balustrade. The interior of the building is arranged with reading rooms and stacks in the rectangular side wings. The idea of the formation and the founding of a public library in Madison originated with some ten or fifteen young ladies known as the "Ladies' Non-Sectarian Club" which was formed in 1885. Among its members were Ruth Manter, Alice Blake, Jennie Knowlton, Emma Manter, Addie Smith, Mable Simonds, Fannie Perkins, Ada Towne, Emma Heald, Nellie Moore and Gertrude Kent. On May 11, 1886, the Madison Library Association was formed. The Madison Public Library was founded in 1886, and was housed in commercial spaces until this building was built in 1906, supported in part by an $8,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. Designed by the local firm of Snow and Humphreys, its tower and angled wings are distinctive features not seen in other libraries throughout the state. The Madison Public Library is an L-shaped one-story brick building featuring one of the most unusual compositions in Maine. This distinction derives from the arrangement of the wide projecting entrance block that projects from the angled rectangular wings. Rising above the intersection of these three components is an octagonal tower capped by a similarly configured standing seam metal roof. The building stands on a corner lot near the community's commercial district. Facing northwest, the facade features a flight of granite steps that rise to a narrow recessed porch framed by two pilasters and a pair of smooth stone columns set in antis. They support a stone entablature decorated with a keystone. Oval windows with four equally spaced stone voussoirs flank the entrance, and all three components are located within a wall surface with corner pilasters and a corbeled string-course. Crowning the elevation is a corbeled cornice. The wings that extend at obtuse angles from the entrance contain reading rooms and the book stacks. Their primary walls are punctuated by a trio of symmetrically placed one-over-one windows surmounted by Queen Anne transoms. Corbeled cornices meet the string-course set up on the facade. Three small windows located on axis with the main units punctuate the granite foundation on each wing, a pattern repeated throughout.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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