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For workshops, for schoolhouses, ornament is inappropriate. Good taste, shown in proportion, lines, color, material, is still demanded, but they belong clearly to the domain of utilitas.

The library comes, beyond doubt, in the latter group. There is a vast range of buildings between, more or less proper subjects of decoration and ornamentation.

But the library should incontestably be assigned to the utilitarian extreme.

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Are there any points where architect and librarian may clash? There will be many points of course where they will differ at first, and have to get together through argument. But are there any influences toward a deadlock?

On the part of the librarian there should be no prejudice. If he be immature, or conceited and opinionated, and only half informed, he may not deserve to win in such a contest of ideas, but his bias at all events would be professional, not selfish.

On the side of the architect, however, might there not be some bias? In the first place, professional bias toward some style he has got his mind set on? He may be too willing to sacrifice utilitas to venustas on this account. During the Boston Public Library discussion, an architect wrote to a daily journal: “Library buildings should be treated as monuments, not as workshops, and must be made beautiful even at the sacrifice of utility.” But if any architect or any trustees now have such views, the building committee is to blame if it employs him, or even admits him to a competition.