'Vast aspiration of man'

The spectacular main, Renaissance Revival facility of the Boston Public Library, on Copley Square, Boston. Designed by the famed architect Charles McKim, the building was opened in 1895. It faces another masterpiece: Henry Hobson Richardson’s Romanesque Trinity Church (see photo below), which was opened in 1877. The two help make Copley Square one of America’s most beautiful public places.

“For no matter how they might want to ignore it, there was an excellence about this city {Boston}, an air of reason, a feeling for beauty, a memory of something very good, and perhaps a reminiscence of the vast aspiration of man which could never entirely vanish.’’

— Arona McHugh (1924-1996), author of two novels set in Boston — The Seacoast of Bohemia and A Banner with a Strange Device.