The Chicago architect Dwight Perkins was associated with the Sullivanesque Chicago school and with Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie school. In this library Perkins looked back to the Richardsonian Romanesque as it had been classically reordered in the late 1880s by McKim, Mead and White. The beautiful limestone walls convey the tactile quality of stone but they are not picturesque; the same is the case with the symmetrical, balanced composition found on the building's principal facade. The library is situated in a residential area, and its appearance is definitely suburban.