Providence Public Library main Children’s Room, as Lovecraft would have known it…

My immediate thought is that this photograph was made during a school visit, to make it seem busy. But possibly in the pre-radio age children just had a different attitude to books and learning, and really did flock there in such numbers.

Something of a boys’ eye view of the exterior of the building…

A plan from Architectural Review, 1902 (sorry, this is the biggest I can find it) of the Library, which had formally opened in March 1900…

Hopefully the plans will appear in Joshi’s forthcoming Lovecraft’s-life-in-photographs book.

Interesting factoid for your next Lovecraft quiz night: the Fleur-de-Lys Studios building (in “The Call of Cthulhu”) was designed by the same team who designed the Providence Public Library.