Quincy philanthropist John Willis Gardner accomplished
two goals in one stroke when he founded the Gardner Museum of Architecture
& Design in 1977, preserving important pieces of Quincy’s history
that otherwise might have ended up in landfills and saving a gorgeous stone
Romanesque Revival structure that had been built in 1888 to house
Quincy’s public library. Today, two floors of the historic building
display the museum’s treasures. Researchers and office staff use the
rest of the structure, including a basement workshop. Professionals and
researchers may enter restricted areas by appointment.
Divided into five galleries on the main floor, the
museum is focused on sharing the history of the area’s structures
from 1822-1925. Examples of banisters, entryways, fences, and the
region’s history of brick-making are on display. Many annotated
photographs of long-gone landmarks, which elsewhere would be hidden in file
drawers and microfiche reels, are arranged on the walls. The main
floor’s South Gallery displays a selection of smaller stained-glass
windows from area churches, but most of that collection is found in the
“Windows of Color” gallery on the second floor.
Sherryl Lang, the museum’s executive director,
says, “Architecture and certainly stained glass span utilitarian and
fine-art forms, particularly when you look at the stained glass in the
museum.” She notes that most examples in the “Windows of
Color” collection were “installed on the second floor because
of their size. The smaller first-floor display is a temporary exhibit, but
it has remained for about a year now because we have been focusing on
capital projects. It will be up for the next three or four months and
possibly for the rest of the year.”
Stone pieces — salvaged materials from razed
buildings — will go on exhibit in a new sculpture garden this summer,
accompanied by information on the origin of the materials and original
structures.
“We continue to collect architectural
salvage,” Lang says. “It is not as readily available as it was.
In the early years, salvage companies used to see these artifacts as rubble
and were more readily willing to discard them. Now everyone recognizes they
can make money out of salvage, and people aren’t so willing to
donate. The price of the salvage has gone up, and we aren’t able to
collect as much.”
The Gardner Museum of
Architecture & Design, 332 Maine St. in Quincy, is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. and 1-4 p.m. Sat. and Sun.
Guided tours of the collection may be arranged by appointment. For more
information, call 217-224-6873 or visit www.gardnermuseumarchitecture.org. To read more, go to www.aeroknow.com/vv.htm
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2005.
