History of The New Haven Free Public Library

By: Lorette Feivelson

In 1886, a free public library had been high on New Haven’s wish list for some time. New Haven was quickly growing and becoming a thriving city and it was believed that a city of its size should have a public library. Other cities of similar size had started to build libraries of their own, including Bridgeport, Connecticut, which opened its own public library in 1881. New Haven’s role as a college town also played a role in the decision to create a public library. It seemed odd that the city that was home to one of the most prestigious universities in the country had not already invested in a library to educate its citizens.

Of course, New Haven did not lack libraries before this point. Yale had its own library with an impressive collection that more than met the needs of its students. Outside of the university there were several private subscription libraries throughout the city, including on at the Young Men’s Institute. These libraries had plenty of material from which to borrow if one could afford the annual membership fees they charged. In most cases, these fees were not charged for profit, rather they covered the cost of maintaining the libraries, none of which were receiving funding from the city. New Haven’s wealthy residents had plenty of options to satiate their thirst for reading material, but the city’s quickly growing working poor population had almost nothing. What New Haven was lacking was a free public library.

 As anyone who has tried to get something done in local government can tell you, ideas and good intentions are lovely, but these ideas never get implemented unless they happen to also intersect with a source of funding. As with many governmental projects, the event that sparked interest among the population of New Haven in the creation of a free public library was the promise of funding. In 1867 a wealthy New Haven resident, Phillip Marett, a former merchant from Boston created his will, leaving his estate to his wife and daughter, and then after their deaths his fortune was to be distributed  among several charitable causes including the city of New Haven. After retiring from the East India trade he moved his family to New Haven where he was shocked by the city’s lack of a library. Marett specified that a portion of the money left after the death of his heirs should be used to furnish a public library in New Haven if one had been established by that point.  If the city did not open one by the time the money would go to the Young Men’s Institute’s library instead.

 The Young Men’s Institute was an institution created of 1828. It was created by 5 young men who wanted to give young working-class men the chance to learn new things without having to go back to school.  The Institute offered classes in many different subjects for its members and offered lectures to the public. The institutes crown jewel was by far its library and reading room, which were open to any of their members for independent study. The collection of consisted of several thousand books that had previously been owned by the Social Library Co. which had gone out of business.  By the time that Marett was preparing his will, the institute was deeply enmeshed in the social and academic life of the city and it’s mission to help working men to educate themselves made it a clear second choice for Marrett.

In 1880 several New Haven residents, including the mayor Henry G Lewis took the first steps toward creating a public library for New Haven. This group started the library process in an attempt to ensure that the City of New Haven would receive Marett’s money and not the Young Men’s Institute. These community members donated $1,600 and three hundred  books towards the opening of a library and on March 2, 1880, the Court of Common Council passed an order to establish and maintain a free public library in the old state house. Mayor Lewis appointed a committee with members from many different circles in the city. Members ranged from bank presidents and lawyers to an immigrant and a wholesale grocer.

This committee was charged with the task of raising $100,000 more from the public but was only successful in collecting $5,535. Despite this disappointing outcome, New Haven’s first attempt at creating a library did happen, albeit for a very short amount of time. This first library was housed in the Old State House on the upper Green, which had been left empty after Hartford became the only capitol of Connecticut. This placement of the library was unpopular with many people who saw the building as an eyesore and wanted it removed, but it was the public building that had the most freely available space. The three hundred books previously donated were put under the care of George Douglas who acted as the librarian and the first library was opened to the public. Unfortunately, the library’s lack of funding and the poor condition of the Old State House meant that it quickly became too costly to run and it closed within the same year. The books were given to the New Haven Colony Historical Society for safe keeping.

In 1885, the next attempt to create a public library for New Haven was made. This attempt required the city to work together with the institution that had previously been its competitor for the Marett gift, the Young Men’s Institute. There were questions about the lack of diversity and age of the existing collection of the Institute’s library, but the city had to admit that it was a much larger collection than it could provide on its own. Due to the city’s failure to provide its people with a free public library, many people believed that this partnership was New Haven’s only chance of gaining a free public library. The Institute had previously considered becoming free and open to the public but was unable to do so because of limited funding. In fact, the institute was struggling to stay open at all. This partnership started off well, but quickly degraded as it became clear the city and the Institute had different goals.

At the beginning of the partnership in February 1885, the directors of the Young Men’s Institute agreed to send a committee of five to coordinate with the city. The city created their own committee of three aldermen and four councilmen. The city committee got permission from the state legislature to issue $100,000 worth of bonds to help pay for the new partnership. Both the city and the Institute wanted to make sure that their organization was getting the better end of the deal, and so two possible plans were created. The first proposal came from the Institute, which offered to make its library and reading room free to the public if New Haven would cover the costs of running it. After this first proposal, the matter disappeared from the records for over a year.

Finally, in 1886 the city once again brought up the issue of opening a public library and a new committee was created to reconnect with the Institute. The committee reached out to president Pardee at the Young Men’s Institute who said that they would be submitting a revised version of the first proposal to the city for consideration. This revised proposal said that for ten years the city could lease the books and property of the Institute and should pay the costs to maintain the library. Under this deal, the Institute would also have the majority of membership on the board of directors. Either party could end the contract at any point. This was not a very beneficial deal for New Haven but the city was desperate and so the board of Aldermen accepted the contract.  The contract did not have such an easy time passing the city council. Two council men, A. Maxcy Hiller and J. Rice Winchell, were strongly against the idea of the city leasing the property and said that if the city was going to have a library, it should own both the space and the books within it. Thus, the council wrote up their own proposal in which the Institute would give the city its books and property. The Young Men’s Institute was offended by this plan and voted not to continue working with the city.

By this poin,t the city was determined to build a library of its own. In September of 1886, the City Council passed a resolution introduced by Councilman Hiller that called for the establishment of a free public library. This resolution was amended by the Board of Aldermen to increase the number of directors being proposed to ten, but they too quickly passed it. The city then set aside $12,000 to pay for the opening of this library and for operating it for two years. The mayor appointed his first board of directors and they elected Willis K. Stetson as the Librarian.

The first library was housed in rented space in 793 Chapel Street. The library had to make do with a very small amount of space as the budget of Six thousand dollars per year had to cover the cost of the lease, renovations, buying books, and paying salaries. Despite the small physical size of the library, it was immediately popular with the public when it opened on February 21, 1887. In the first week of the reading room being open, 1,348 people signed up for a borrower’s card. It was estimated that the reading room attendance ranged from three hundred to four hundred  people on weekdays. As for circulation, books were checked out 10,500 times within the first month. In fact, by the end of the year the library had the fifth largest circulation of any public library in the country. The people of New Haven made it clear, they loved their library.

The library’s limited budget meant that the collection was small for a city of New Haven’s size, consisting of only 3,500 books and a couple of periodicals. The 300 donated books from the earlier attempt at creating a library were returned.  Several of the books were duplicates as the library attempted to predict and keep up with the demand for popular titles such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ivanhoe. The collection was modeled after Bridgeport’s collection with 2,500 of the books being fiction and 1,000 being nonfiction.

The library’s small physical space and collection soon began to cause problems. The reading room became crowded. Even with multiple copies of popular works in circulation it was still very difficult for readers to get their hands on the books they wanted. The city appropriated more money for the library to buy books and the collection grew from three thousand, five hundred  books to over seventy thousand but the continued expansion of the collection  was limited by storage space. Within two years the library had outgrown its tiny first home, and the city started to look for a new location.

In 1889, the city selected the site of the old Third Congregational Church on Church Street as the new home of the New Haven Free Public Library. The city purchased the site for about $71,000. It was renovated to meet the needs of the library and opened in 1891, again to immediate success. This space was intended to be the library’s permanent home, but in 1906 the library again outgrew this space. The city purchased that land on the corner of Elm and Temple streets, where the main branch of the library is still housed today, for $95,000. The building was built thanks to a generous donation from New Haven resident Mary E. Ives. Ives was the widow of Hoadley B. Ives who had founded the New Haven trolley system.

As for the Marett gift, in 1889 his last heir, Ellen M. Gifford passed away and one tenth of what was left was given to New Haven for their library. The Young Men’s Institute sued the city for a portion of the gift. The Institute lost the case as the court said that the city had met the terms set forth in Marett’s will and had successfully opened a thriving, free public library. This gift would be used to purchase, what was at one-point half of the library’s collection.

    Courtesy of Library Connection Inc.; New Haven Free Public Library

Bibliography

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