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Ames Free Library

1883 establishments in MassachusettsButler–Ames familyHenry Hobson Richardson buildingsHistoric district contributing properties in MassachusettsLibraries in Bristol County, Massachusetts
Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in MassachusettsLibrary buildings completed in 1883NRHP infobox with nocatNational Register of Historic Places in Bristol County, MassachusettsPublic libraries in MassachusettsRichardsonian Romanesque architecture in MassachusettsUse mdy dates from August 2023
Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA) oblique view
Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA) oblique view

The Ames Free Library is a public library designed by noted American architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It is located at 53 Main Street, Easton, Massachusetts, immediately adjacent to another Richardson building, Oakes Ames Memorial Hall. In 2016 the Ames Free Library won the Best Small Library in America award from the Library Journal. This award was created in 2005 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to encourage and showcase outstanding libraries serving populations of fewer than 25,000. This marks the second time the library has won this award.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Ames Free Library (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 42.067222222222 ° E -71.105 °
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Address

Ames Free Library

Main Street 53
02356
Massachusetts, United States
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Phone number

call+15082382000

Website
amesfreelibrary.org

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linkWikiData (Q4745872)
linkOpenStreetMap (212963538)

Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA) oblique view
Ames Free Library (North Easton, MA) oblique view
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Nearby Places

The Rockery
The Rockery

The Rockery, also known as the Memorial Cairn, is an unusual war memorial designed by the noted American landscaper Frederick Law Olmsted. It is located at the center of North Easton Center in Easton, Massachusetts, where it forms the focal point for two adjacent H. H. Richardson buildings with their own Olmsted landscapes. The Rockery was created in 1882 as a memorial for North Easton's citizens lost in the American Civil War, a public area, and a carriage promenade with views of North Easton. It consists of boulders heaped into a long, asymmetric mound across a rustic archway that echoes those of H. H. Richardson's nearby Oakes Ames Memorial Hall. In April 1882 Olmsted wrote to Oakes Angier Ames that such cairns were of monuments "the oldest and most enduring in the world", and with "the beautiful plants that have become rooted in them and which spring out of their crannies or have grown over them. . . are far more interesting and pleasant to see than the greater number of those constructed of massive masonry and elaborate sculpture." He further explained that plants growing across the rocky buttress would symbolize peace taming war. Over the years, boulders loosened and toppled away, stairways crumbled, and the gardens filled with weeds. At one point, the Rockery was lowered from its original height of 25 feet and utility poles installed on its eastern tip. In recent years, however, the Rockery has been restored and is being actively maintained.

Ames Gate Lodge
Ames Gate Lodge

The Ames Gate Lodge is a celebrated work by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson. It is privately owned on an estate landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, but its north facade can be seen from the road at 135 Elm Street, North Easton, Massachusetts. In 2013, the Ames Gate Lodge was protected by a preservation easement held by Historic New England. The lodge was designed and constructed in 1880-1881 for Frederick Lothrop Ames, son of railway magnate Oliver Ames Jr., as the northern entrance to his Langwater estate. Although Langwater dated from 1859 with 1876 additions, its northern regions had until then remained unfinished. Ames thus engaged Richardson and Olmsted in collaboration on its creation. Olmsted's landscape designs were implemented in 1886–1887. The Gate Lodge is a remarkable synthesis of oversize stone wall, arched gate, and gatehouse building, perhaps based in part on Richardson's appreciation of the Central Park bridges designed by Calvert Vaux. It forms a long, low mass lying directly athwart the estate's entry road, which runs southward within its dominating, semicircular arch. The massive walls appear to be crude heaps of rounded boulders from the estate soil -- "cyclopean rubble" in Vincent Scully's memorable phrase—trimmed in Longmeadow brownstone. The blocky, two-story lodge proper stands west of the arch, and originally housed the estate gardener on the lower floor with rooms for bachelor guests above. Across the arch is a long, low wing ending in a circular bay, once used for storing plants through the winter. The lodge's public (northern) facade is relatively flat and austere; its southern facade, by contrast, is highly shaped with protrusions and a large porch featuring carvings by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Capping all is the lodge's prominent, hipped, reddish-tiled roof with its eyelid dormers. As Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote, "The presence of a building is in its roof, and what a roof the Ames Gate Lodge has!" The nearby F. L. Ames Gardener's Cottage (1884–85) was also designed by Richardson, and built some 400 feet (120 m) east of the Gate Lodge when the gardener's family outgrew the lodge. It was later enlarged by Richardson's successors, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, and has subsequently been shingled and otherwise modified.