This must be one of the last library buildings to pay such pious obeisance to McKim, Mead and White's Neo-Renaissance Boston Public Library, a good thirty years after its building and twenty-five years after Willson used the same inspiration for the main Providence Public Library building (
PR13). Both employed yellow brick with stone trim, but whereas Willson's sparkled with ornament, Tilton's is severe and chaste in aspect.