[LIB0709]Thursday, June 26, 2008
1917 Denkmann Library, Rock Island, Illinois
[LIB0708]The Rock Island Public Library holds the distinction of being the oldest public library in the state of Illinois.
1960s Lawson McGhee Library, KNOXVILLE TN
[LIB0706]The Public Library System we know today can be said to date from the opening of Lawson McGhee Library on October 28, 1886.
The first Lawson McGhee Library was a subscription library. At least four earlier public libraries had been created in Knoxville between 1804 and 1873, with the last of these library associations, known as the "Public Library of Knoxville," having been founded in 1873. Its assets were merged into those of Lawson McGhee Library in 1885 prior to the Library opening. Although the founding date for the Knox County Public Library System could arguably be 1873, one unbroken element of the continuity, the name Lawson McGhee Library, can be clearly dated to 1886.
[Source: http://knoxrooms.sirsi.net/rooms/portal/page/21462_About_the_Library]
Public Library BURLINGTON MA
[LIB0704]The consolidation of the town's schools into a single new building (the Union School) provided an opportunity to move to a larger building. When a former summer resident, Edward Barker, donated a sum of money to the town for library purposes in 1896, there were sufficient funds to convert the old Center School (now the Burlington Town Museum) at the corner of Cambridge and Bedford Streets into a library. The Library and Reading Room, as it then was known, opened on June 29, 1897 and remained there for over seventy years.
c1915 Public Library OAKLAND CALIFORNIA CA
[LIB0703]The Oakland Free Library opened to the public as a municipal entity November 7, 1878. It was the second public library founded in California (after Eureka) under the Rogers Free Library Act of 1878, an act of legislation allowing cities to levy taxes for the support of public libraries. The library had its origin in the Oakland Library Association, a subscription library established ten years earlier in 1868. Once the Rogers Act made it possible, the Trustees of the Oakland Library Association put into action the plan that would transfer all of its assets - building, books, furniture, and librarian - to the city of Oakland.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Public Library, GRAND FORKS ND
A postcard view of the library from 1909.
Grand Forks is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Forks,_North_Dakota]
Grand Forks is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Forks,_North_Dakota]
Jarvis Memorial Public Library, BLOOMFIELD NJ
Circa 1920s view of the Westminster Presbyterian Church and Jarvis Memorial Public Library. It is now part of Bloomfield College.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Public Library SEATTLE WA
The initial move to form a public library in Seattle came only 17 years after the first white settlers arrived on the shores of Puget Sound. It was July 30, 1868, when 50 residents of the rough-hewn logging town gathered to form a library association, good intentions that produced only minimal success over the next two decades. A new Ladies Library Association in 1888 provided the strongest foundation yet for The Seattle Public Library. In 1890, the city established the Library as an official city department, designated to receive 10 percent of the amount raised by city licenses and fines.
The new public library opened in 1891 on the fifth floor of the Occidental Building in Pioneer Square. A lumber company vice president borrowed its first book, a brand new copy of Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad." [http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_history_history]
1909 Library, Lebanon, New Hampshire
The Lebanon Public Library History Room Collection houses research materials on Lebanon, the Upper Valley, and on the State of New Hampshire. [http://www.leblibrary.com/history%20room/historyroom.shtml]
Public Library LACONIA NH
The main library building is a fine example of Romanesque Revival style – a style that emphasizes weight and mass through rock-faced masonry, heavy arches, and broad roofs. This style was inspired by H. H. Richardson designed by Boston architect Charles Bingham and built by E. Noyes Whitcomb and Co. of Boston, using Deer Island granite, New Brunswick granite, oak paneling, and stained glass windows. [http://www.youseemore.com/laconia/about.asp?p=9]
1913 Public Library, Denver, Colorado
In June 1889, City Librarian John Cotton Dana established Denver's first public library in a wing of Denver High School. He referred to it as a "center of public happiness." In 1910, the city opened a Central Library building of its own, an elegant Greek temple design funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and located in downtown's Civic Center Park. Between 1913 and 1920, Carnegie also underwrote construction of the city's first eight branch libraries. [http://www.denverlibrary.org/about/history.html]
1905 Thrall Library Building MIDDLETOWN NY
Buy this postcard!
"Middletown Thrall Library, 1901-1996: A Historical Study of a Small City Public Library" offers rare insight into one of Middletown's most important social, cultural and educational institutions: the library. This comprehensive work covers nearly a century of the library's evolution, from its beginnings to the new Thrall Library on Depot Street. Click here.
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