Venue
Human Rights: Ideas and Action is being held at the Boston Public Library (Rabb Auditorium) and Old South Church (2nd and 4th floors). Details, maps and links to follow.
Note: This conference is free and open to the public; we request that you register online. This will help us allocate resources and prepare for lunch. The conference is made possible through the generous support of several organizations and academic programs (see our sponsors list).
Old South ChurchLooking at Old South Church from Copley Square, you see an outstanding and colorful example of Northern Italian Gothic architecture, advocated in the 1850s by the English architectural critic John Ruskin. This National Historic Landmark building is an unusually ornate design for a New England Congregational church. It radiates the opulent taste and the sense of optimism and progress of the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War. The church, constructed between 1872 and 1875 for a congregation founded in 1669, is distinguished by its tall bell tower; brown, pink and grey stonework; walls of Roxbury puddingstone; decorative carvings; a roof striped with tiles of red and black slate; and a cupola or lantern of green and russet-colored copper. |
  |
||
Boston Public LibraryFounded in 1848, by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library (BPL) was the first large free municipal library in the United States. The Boston Public Library's first building of its own was a former schoolhouse located on Mason Street that was opened to the public on March 20, 1854. The Library's collections approximated 16,000 volumes, and it was obvious from the day the doors were first opened that the quarters were inadequate. In December of that same year the Library's Commissioners were authorized to locate a new building upon a lot on Boylston Street. The present Copley Square location has been home to the Library since 1895, when architect Charles Follen McKim completed his "palace for the people." |
  |
||