“The Naperville Public Library, Part II: The New Nichols Library” by S.M. O’Connor

The new Nichols Library in downtown Naperville, Illinois in DuPage County is the central library of the Naperville Public Library (N.P.L.), though both of the branch libraries in Will County are full-service libraries and one of them is actually larger than the Nichols Library. [The N.P.L. is one of the many American public library systems that calls its central library the Main Library.] It is one of the busiest library buildings in the United States of America.

In 1984, Miriam Fry (1917-2011) retired and the Naperville Public Library Board appointed Roger Pearson the first Library Director, a position which he held until 1995. He had successively been Assistant Director and Director of Libraries in Corpus Christi, Texas. Beforehand, he had been administrator of the Nicolet Library System,[1] which is headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and provided support services to public libraries in seven counties. [For part of the time he was Library Director for the N.P.L., he was also a lecturer at the graduate school Library and Information Science program at Dominican University (formerly Rosary College) in River Forest, Illinois from 1991 to 1995.] Under his leadership, the Naperville Public Library built the new Nichols Library, vacated the Old Nichols Library, and gained its first branch library with the construction of the Naper Boulevard Library.

The City of Naperville acquired the property at 200 West Jefferson Avenue, and the second Nichols Library opened on March 11, 1986. The Miriam B. Fry Reading Room is a tribute to the lady who headed The Nichols Library as Librarian or Library Director from 1950 until her retirement in 1984.

The new Nichols Library was a $6,000,000 facility. At 63,300 square feet, it was almost five times the size of the old Nichols Library. The building and its parking lot occupy the block bounded by Jefferson Avenue on the north, Jackson Avenue on the south, Webster Street on the east, and Eagle Street on the west. On opening day, the new library had 143,191 books, C.D.s, audio-visual materials, periodicals, and other items with which to serve Naperville’s 67,371 residents.

In 1990, the new Nichols Library had a display on dyslexia with the help of a memorial fund for James L. Nichols III (1922-1989).[2] Late in life he had discovered he was dyslexic.[3] James L. Nichols IV commented, “We decided the best thing in his honor would be a dyslexic program at Nichols Library.”[4]

Figure 1 Credit: Sean M. O’Connor Caption: This is the Nichols Library, central library of the Naperville Public Library, as seen on December 4, 2010.

In front of the Nichols Library (at one angle) at the corner of Jefferson and Webster is the bas-relief brick sculpture Man’s Search for Knowledge through the Ages. It was a gift of Mr. & Mrs. John A. Hamer and Mr. & Mrs. John J. Hamer in honor of Donald Dean Hamer (1933-1984). It was dedicated April 12, 1987. The sundial that stands at the center of the semicircle was a gift of the Naperville Council of Garden Clubs.

Figure 2 Sean M. O’Connor Caption: This is Man’s Search for Knowledge through the Ages, as seen on December 4, 2010.

Figure 3 Credit: Sean M. O’Connor Caption: Man’s Search for Knowledge through the Ages is a bas-relief sculpture, carved in brick, as seen on December 4, 2010.

The Nichols Library is also within walking distance (in good weather) of The Riverwalk. The sixteen-story Millennium Carillon in Moser Tower & Visitor Center is open May through October.

Figure 4 Credit: Sean M. O’Connor Caption: This is Moser Tower & Visitor Center, as seen on December 4, 2010. Moser Tower stands at the base of the Riverwalk’s Rotary Hill. The address is 443 Aurora Avenue.

Through the 1980s, Naperville’s population doubled, and usage of the Naperville Public Library continued to rise dramatically, and by 1990 circulation reached 943,355 – about 50,000 short of 1,000,000 items through just one facility. Soon after the second Nichols Library opened, the Naperville Public Library Board began to talk of establishing a “triangle” of full-service libraries, adding one in the southeast of town and one in the southwest.

After Itasca, Illinois–based Williams Architects planned a successful renovation of the Naper Boulevard Library, the firm received a commission to plan the renovation of a 41,500-square-foot area in the Nichols Library that took place in 2015. All the public areas in the building underwent renovations on a $2,500,000 budget. New carpeting, flooring, tables, and chairs were installed. Due to reductions in the print collections, the collections and seating was reorganized in a way to open up views on both floors of the West Branch of the DuPage River and the Naperville Riverwalk. A “Tech Help” desk was installed to allow library patrons to receive help with their own mobile devices. The meeting rooms and group study rooms were renovated to increase access to technology and allow for more flexible usage. Throughout the building, lighting was replaced. New, energy-efficient L.E.D. lighting was installed.

Olya Tymciurak, who was formerly Manager of the 95^th Street Library, replaced Sue Prindiville as Library Manager of the Nichols Library. Previously, she was Library Manager of the Naper Boulevard Library, so at this point she had managed all three of the libraries. Ms. Tymciurak joined the N.P.L. staff in 1991, having earned her B.A. in East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her M.L.I.S. at the University of Toronto. She previously worked at the University of Arizona Library, the Tucson Planning Department Library, the Tucson Public Library, the Utah State Library, and the Salt Lake County Library. While employed full-time at the Naperville Public Library, she worked simultaneously part-time at the West Chicago Public Library in West Chicago, Illinois as an Adult Reference Librarian from 2007 to 2016 and currently works part-time in the same capacity at the Mount Prospect Public Library in Mount Prospect, Illinois so she must have practically no free time.

The new Nichols Library is open from 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Sundays September through May and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sundays June through August, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays. It is down the street from the Apple Store at 120 West Jefferson Avenue and roughly kitty corner from the Lou Malnati’s pizzeria housed in an old firehouse at 131 West Jefferson Avenue. The address of the new Nichols Library is 200 West Jefferson, Naperville, Illinois 60540. The phone number of the Naperville Public Library (NPL) is (630) 961-4100, while the extension for general information at the Nichols Library is 6322.

ENDNOTES

[1] Today, the Nicolet Federated Library System provides support services to forty-two public libraries in eight counties. It is one of sixteen such state-funded library systems in Wisconsin. They are counterparts to the two Illinois Regional Library Systems: Reaching Across Illinois System and the Illinois Heartland Library System.

[2] Ann Piccininni, “A Family Worth celebrating,” Chicago Tribune, 21 September, 1990 (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-09-21-9003190330-story.html) Accessed 10/13/18

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.