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North façade, close frontal view, depicting the seating at the base with a window; The other style of national importance to emerge from Boston in the 1880s was a resurgent neo-classicism led by McKim, Mead & White. Their most influential building, the imposing Boston Public Library, drew on Italian Renaissance, Roman and contemporary French sources. Throughout the building sculpture and mural painting were incorporated in rooms panelled with rare marbles, creating what the Library Trustees called a 'Place for the People'. The murals include those of 1895-1896 (by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes) and 1894 (by Edwin Austin Abbey and John Singer Sargent) and with bronze bas-relief doors by Daniel Chester French. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 12/2/2007)