Boston Public Library

This guide to the Boston Public Library centers on the roughly 4,500 wooden pilings driven deep beneath the Dartmouth Street entrance, supporting a building raised on filled Back Bay harbor land after the site was open water until the 1860s. You'll hear about architect Charles McKim's runaway budget for the 1895 building, the granite quarried and fitted in Milford, and a 1929 sewer leak that let air reach wood that had stayed wet since 1888. Look at the arches and the words free to all carved above the keystone, and remember what is holding it all up.