A closed door and countless treasures behind it, in huge rooms that are considered unusable in the public library of Boston

The switch of the MCKIM building of the Boston Public Library unfolds at every step on the big staircase.

Beyond the imposing stone lions, the golden tinted stairwell makes way for an airy gallery with murals, a millennium -running celebration of the muses. In the neighborhood, a narrower staircase leads to the Gedempte Third Floor, where people wander through the lush gallery to disembark John singer Sargent’s ‘Triumph of Religion’, a monumental cycle of murals that the artist worked despite almost three decades, despite almost three decades of work.

Inevitably, some will try the leather -covered door at the end of the gallery, which Seems to promise even more miracles.

But the door is locked.

It has been closed to the public for the public for more than a decade and hides a once grainy enfilade of vaulted ceilings, interior arcades and raised walkways that wrap around the courtyard of the library.

The rooms, which are many of the most celebrated spaces of the building, now warehouse a Narnia-worthy collection of the interests of the library-alles of sculptures by Joan or Arc and a portrait of Samuel Johnson, into a room with illuminated dioramas, where there are a few miniature boxes in the middle of the battle.

There are neoclassical sculptures that peek from under plastic, a Weathervane in the form of a cod, a printing press that belonged to artist Hyman Bloom and a set of golf clubs that once waved by author Cleveland Amory. And that does not mean anything about the countless architectural plans, microfiche, administrative files, card catalogs and archives piled up in boxes and in crates.

At 130 years old, the MCKIM building is almost as iconic as the collection that it houses. Designed by architect Charles Follen McKim, It is a kind of secular cathedral that increases the life of the Spirit.

But today, almost 40 percent of the building – essentially the entire third floor – is decayed and inaccessible to the public. Paint peels of his walls and ceilings. Crumbling plaster has exposed the brickwork. Leaking pipes have encouraged library officials to switch off the heat, which means that most rooms on the third floor have no climate control at all, a demolition ball of temperature fluctuations and humidity.

Now at a crisis point, the unusable spaces and their risk Content has encouraged library officials to imagine a huge – and mass duration – revision, one that would not only restore the third floor, but also reforms one of the oldest and most famous library buildings in the country.

BPL President David Leonard said that every renovation should not only protect the building, but also protect the collections of the library, making them (and the physical building) more accessible to the public.

“We have an obligation for our collections and the building itself, which we would like to consider as part of the collection,” said Leonard while touring the MCKIM.

The library recently received a gift of $ 5.5 million from an anonymous donor to study the building and the systems. It is a provisional step to understand which obstacles and opportunities the building can present as a renovation project that wants to update the structure of the 19th century to meet the requirements of library visitors from the 21st century.

As soon as the five -year planning phase is completed, leaders hope to enter the design phase of the project.

Beth Prindle, BPL’s Director of Research and Special Collections, called the renovation effort “A Once in a multiple-generation opportunity”.

“The MCKIM transformation and rebirth is a Clarion call,” she said. “We have collected this incredible, irreplaceable collection, and we need it [the public] To help us get the way, not just for [today]But for future generations. “

In addition to branchenovations, BPL has completed two large capital projects in its central library over the past decade. In 2016, the library revealed a renovation of $ 78 million to the credit library in the Boylston Street Building from the 70s. That was followed by a project of $ 16 million in 2022 A state-of-the-art facility To accommodate the enormous special collections of rare books and other historical items.

However, the costs of renovating the MCKIM would probably overwrite those earlier projects. A 2021 master plan Estimated construction costs at $ 325 million, but the final project could cost considerably more.

Leonard, who compared the potential costs of the project to building a new public high school, said that the library will have a better price estimate in a year, but “anyway, it is a large, triple, hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“There is a world of questions that need to be answered,” he said. “But at some point we will have a number, and we have to ask: what is the city really for?

The city has so far promised $ 50 million for the renovation, which Mayor Michelle Wu said that for years had been desperately needed.

“But it feels more urgent than ever,” she said, especially in a political climate “that often tries to limit or forbid who has access to which books.”

Wu added that the “unpredictability or even outright hostility of the federal government has complicated the financing comparison.

Still, “we should find a way to see this,” she said. “That requires a combination of city dollars, partnerships, philanthropic support and hopefully other sources of financing.”

But perhaps the greater challenge in the field of design, the renovation of a municipal building and national historical monument, whose symbolism is deeply intertwined with the identity of the city.

Boston was not only the first major American city that had a public library, but it later pioneered in the branch system and brought books to neighborhoods in the city. An addition from 1972 roughly doubled the footprint of the central library, creating a complex of 1 million square base that includes an entire city block.

In the meantime, the collection itself has swollen to become one of the largest in the country, a vast horde of more than 20 million objects that contains everything, from medieval manuscripts and a rare edition of Shakespeare’s first folio to current bestsellers and even a dedicated bread from bread.

The library has a cultural advisory group, PAM, hired to help civil servants think about a large number of problems during the planning phase, everything, from public space and collection care to background activities and overall accessibility.

PAM strategy director Abigail Smith Hanby compared McKim’s architecture and collections with a cathedral in their power to transform visitors.

These libraries “were so majestically designed to make you feel awe, be inspired, to see something big and to be part of that thing that is big,” she said. That is “creating knowledge, and [the McKim] Is one of those first places for that creation of knowledge. “

A clear priority is to use the special and research collections of the library. While walking the third floor, Leonard presented a series of bent corners in private meetings enclosed by Glass, while Prindle introduced a cafe in a particularly large room for the Sargent Gallery.

Leaders also want to improve accessibility in the stair-dependent MCKIM, add lifts, create better connections with the Boylston building and the many rooms of the MCKIM animate that are open to the public nowadays, but miserably under-utilized.

One of the more ambitious – and perhaps controversial – ideas is to build a raised walkway across the central courtyard of the library to connect the two buildings, or perhaps even the courtyard to close in a way that retains its outdoor feeling.

“Is there a way to do a transparent roof,” asked Leonard, who added that a housing would make use of the outdoor space possible throughout the year. “Let’s have those conversations.”

Another major priority: how you can better store and take care of the research collection of the library, which has around 16 million objects. The Boylston building, with approximately 4.5 hectares of storage over four floors, is on capacity. The auxiliary facility of the library in West Roxbury is full in the same way.

That means that many of the remaining objects – the furniture, the archives, that Joan or Arc sculptures – ended up on the third floor, the nightmare of a curator.

Prindle said that the library has a team and “triage” protocols in the event of the event, is found, As happened in 2015When the library temporarily closed its rare book department after a widespread outbreak.

“My team would sleep so well at night if we were not worried about things that happened to the building that influenced the collections,” said Prindle. “I really think this is the greatest danger we are dealing with now.”

The Hanby company, PAM, also has William Rawn Associates, the architectural group that led the award-winning renovation of the Boylston Street building.

Rawn Principal Cliff Gayley said that when the company started working on the project, it considered the Boylston to build the “complementary opposite” of the MCKIM.

“The worldview that this space had designed no longer existed,” he said while touring the redesigned library. “Something radical had to happen.”

The same could be said today of the MCKIM building, which was partially renovated in the 1990s. The question now, said Leonard, is what kind of library Boston wants?

“In some respects we try to end a little that has never been done,” he said. “We hope this is a journey that we all go together.”