Libraries I Have Known

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The library in Chatham on Cape Cod, August 10, 2023. (Photo by me.)

When my family and I enjoyed a Cape Cod vacation again this past week, we again passed the small, old, lovely library in downtown Chatham. That Massachusetts sight made me think of libraries I have known during my life. A very good feeling.

I’ve only been inside Chatham’s 1896-built Eldredge Public Library once — during a very rainy day several years ago. (When I go away, I bring books from my hometown Montclair, New Jersey, library; this time the quietly eloquent author Kent Haruf’s poignant Eventide and Benediction sequels to his poignant Plainsong novel.) But that one look inside Eldredge was quite nice — and the Chatham facility even allows vacationers to borrow books they can return before their Cape Cod stay ends.

My first library memory was of the one in Teaneck, New Jersey, where my parents moved from the Bronx, New York, when I was a toddler. Befitting the importance of libraries, the 1927 brick building was part of the township complex along with the municipal building and more. My parents didn’t read many books, but my mother did thankfully bring me to this library whenever I wanted.

I first borrowed children’s books, of course, and then went on to kid-friendly biographies of historical figures and baseball players. Not too much fiction back then (what was I thinking? 🙂 ), but I did take a liking to the “Danny Dunn” sci-fi/adventure books for young readers.

Finally, as a teen, I got interested in more-mature novels and borrowed many. If I loved a book we were assigned and given a copy of in my high school English class, I’d later borrow the same novel from the library to reread. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Richard Wright’s Native Son? I’m thinking of you.

Then came Rutgers College, where the 1956-opened Alexander Library was utilitarian-looking but large. A great place to study when one wanted to get away from the noisy dorms, and also the place where I took out a ton of novels in addition to the ones that English majors purchased at the campus bookstore for their courses. Among the many books I borrowed from Alexander to read for the first time was The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre (not Alexander 🙂 ) Dumas.

After getting an English degree from the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Rutgers, I remained in that city for a year sharing an apartment with a good friend while working as a reporter at a daily newspaper about 30 miles away. The New Brunswick library was a Carnegie one that opened in 1903.

Returning to the academic life to earn a master’s at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois, I got a job in…a library! Specifically, Medill’s library, to help make ends meet. Basically one large room, with me sitting at the front desk checking out books and other materials for students long before you could do that on self-service machines.

Northwestern’s main library complex consisted of two linked 1933 and 1970 buildings — the older of which was rather ornate inside. I spent a lot of time there working on a thesis about how the media covered South Africa’s appalling system of apartheid, which was still formally in existence back then. No Internet or Google to speed along research; I perused books, looked at newspapers on “microfiche,” etc.

After graduating from Medill, I moved to New York City and spent the next 15 years there — first in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then Queens. So I got to know and enjoy several of NYC’s relatively “petite” branch libraries. Plus the occasional visits to the majestic 1911-opened Beaux-Arts flagship library at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The one flanked by those two famous large marble lions — who, like the Detroit Lions, have never been to a Super Bowl.

Then I moved to Montclair, New Jersey, a suburb which has two libraries — the 1955-opened main one and a smaller 1914 Carnegie branch. I have taken out more novels from the main facility than I can count, including most of the ones I read to feed this blog each week. 🙂

A final note: When I travel in the U.S. or abroad, I occasionally visit libraries to look at their outsides and/or go in. A particularly fond memory is seeing the eye-catching one in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 2007; the building’s architecture actually includes huge facsimiles of books — including The Stranger and The Little Prince.

Libraries you have known?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com every Thursday. The latest piece — about what a controversial interim township manager did before he unexpectedly died this month — is here.

105 thoughts on “Libraries I Have Known”

  1. Like you, I visit libraries when I travel and have been to some wonderful ones. My favourite library is still The Vancouver Public Library which was built to look like the collisium. I frequented it often when I lived on the west coast of Canada.

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  2. I have such fond memories of my tiny one-room high school library in my tiny high school. The smell is so memorable! I love that musty old book smell! Ebooks just don’t do it for me. I think I read almost every book in there!

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    • Thank you, lulabelle! Yes, the musty old book smell in a library is wonderful! A tiny room like you’re remembering undoubtedly naccentuates that scent. And I’m not surprised that you read almost every book there. 🙂

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  3. My hometown library (Swanton, Ohio) is located right next to the Norfolk Southern main line from the East Coast through to Chicago. No worries; Swanton’s a railroad town and the librarians don’t shush the locomotives and the locomotives stopped saying ‘s-h-h-h” when the railroads switched from steam to diesel. I know I feel as though I’m the library equivalent of a “plank owner” because as a junior high student, I helped move books from the old library (“Book closet,” my history teacher once sniffed) on Main Street (also next to the tracks) to the them-new building in 1978. The library tries to be of interest to everyone; there’s a chess club, a book discussion club, an anime club, a jigsaw puzzle table, a rotating local history display (I once contributed a display of my old cartoons from what used to be the local paper) and a continually updated (and updated on Facebook) collection of DVDs of the latest movies and TV shows. You can also borrow an astronomical telescope.
    Love that place.
    I’d hide from the madding crowd at Growling Spleen’s university library, too. Jerome Library, named for a past president, was designed to look like a row of books on a shelf between two 1950s-style bookends. I liked the grad student private study cubbies; I’d grab a book and find an empty cubby, with the understanding I’d have to vacate if the grad student who’d reserved the cubby showed up. I never had to.
    Sandusky, Ohio, Library was in an agreeably ornate Carnegie building that was modernized while I was there with a wraparound modern structure that surrounded the library building and the old county jail next door, which became the library offices. I just missed a chance to sign the top girder of the modern section before it was hoisted into place. Oh well. They have, or had, a copy of my old NCS Chapter’s cartoon collection.
    I spent this summer doing caricature and cartoon workshops at various branches of the Toledo (Ohio) Lucas County Public Library, from the modern-palatial main library downtown (with a rock band playing on the lobby the day of my workshop) to an “inner-city” branch that honored Toledo-born jazz great Art Tatum. My favorite was the Birmingham Branch, just around the corner from Tony Packo’s world-famous hot dogs, which was an independent library before TLCPL absorbed it. It’s the repository of neighborhood history, particularly of the Hungarian immigrants “recruited” overseas to come to work in one particular factory. And though the neighborhood’s present-day demographics are different, there’s a rich Hungarian-American cultural history on display in the basement, as well as an homage to the Great Lakes shipping industry that’s represented just down the street by a shipyard with its two immense drydocks and the Midwest International Terminal next door. I like the Birmingham Branch Library.

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    • Thank you, Don, for that very descriptive chronicle of your various great library experiences! A library near railroad tracks is definitely a challenge to the “libraries should be quiet” crowd, but I like the “ambiance” you describe.

      Interesting that a Carnegie library was modernized to that extent (via the wraparound). Sounds like the original building remains within?

      And, yes, as you note, libraries can be places for a lot of things and activities in addition to books. Such as drawing caricatures — which I know you do very well. 🙂

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      • Yes, the historic look of the Carnegie Library in Sandusky is very much preserved from the street. The modern part is mostly visible from the back, where the “new” main entrance and parking lot is.
        One of my favorite things about the re-imagibed library is that Sandusky isn’t a “shush” library either — though there is one quite nice, and comfortably-sized, “quiet reading room.”

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  4. My earliest school library memory (a humblebrag):

    When I was six, at check-out, my elementary school’s librarian informed me she didn’t think I was ready to read the books I had picked, since they were meant for higher grades. I told her I was “flabbergasted” she would think so, and from that day forward, I could check out whatever I intrigued me.

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  5. Undoubtedly it is the hoarder in me who has crowded out whatever would remain of my affection for libraries, because I don’t think I’ve taken out a book from such a place in 50 years. I am the son of academics, the better half of the pair toiling at the top of a medical one for decades, before retiring in glory. My professor father, from whom I inherited the hoarding gene, has his old trove housed in his university’s sprawling collection, and featured in the website. And I worked in a library part-time over a couple of years as a bookish, yet delinquent youth.

    The professor’s prerogative is not the layman’s– who must, within an allotted time, return what he takes out, or be fined.The professor is, by contrast, cajoled and gently reminded, from time to time, that a book he took out sometimes even years ago has never returned, like Boston Charlie, and if he happens on it, how pleasant indeed it would be for the receiving clerk to witness the return of the prodigal tome. After he died, 28 years after my father taught his last class, we turned up a few of the university’s books around the family manse as we attempted to establish order.

    Had I been the beneficiary of a similar liberal library policy, I might have become a habitual checker-outer– though parting would always have been the hardest part. I like to keep the books I’ve read for reference, and I like to keep books I haven’t read for the day, however far, that I get around to them.

    Attempting, ineffectually, to winnow my holdings to a few zillion in recent weeks, I see the size and scope of my obsession: overlarge and a bit nutty. I have removed dozens from the tottering piles, while many hundreds remain. Worse– looking past the dusty volumes of forgotten lore like so many foothills, I see beyond them the sheer towering cliffs of my 33 1/3 rpm albums, which number, in my humble estimate, at around 1300. Then there are my 78’s– only 150 or so, though they come with a cabinet model Victrola.

    CD’s? Why yes, I have a few. Hundred. In my defense I am now, apart from maybe 10 saved out because they feature family and friends, bereft of VCR tapes. But it took me till about 6 weeks ago to cull and send the rest to slaughter. Let’s not talk audio cassettes.

    I live at what might be described as the southernmost tip of Harlem, once home to the reclusive Nicholas Brothers, who, were after some weeks unseen, discovered to have died under gargantuan heaps of saved newspapers.

    Perhaps that is to be my fate: in order to escape the overdue limbo, I attempted a book-built heaven of my own, a tower of babble. Several.

    Next shake-up, I may be found beneath my own private gotterdammerung.

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    • Thank you, jhNY! That is quite an eloquent comment from the halls of hoarder-dom. I gather from your description that you have way too much stuff, but it’s certainly appealing stuff — books and music. From what you’ve said before, you live close to where people sell books on the street — making for nearby temptations to add to a person’s collection(s).

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  6. Time goes on Dave, before I`ve read so many books at night when I should be doing school works, oh well…

    Later we lived in KS, then TN and now finally in OH.
    Libraries are such an intricate part of humanity.
    In this town we live 5 minutes away from our local library.
    I started volunteering from the beginning there.

    During summer when schools are off. Libraries provide opportunities for teens to work there to gather experience.
    There are also safety issues for young girls. They are well protected from crafty, opportunist men.

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    • Thank you, Bebe! “Libraries are such an intricate part of humanity” — love that line! Glad you mentioned some of the great things about libraries, and very nice that you live close to one in Ohio and are a dedicated library volunteer. 🙂

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      • Also Dave, they often hire volunteers with special needs as I knew some high functioning Down teens. One I know would take over.
        Then they had personnel changes.

        Just the other day I saw the same young man in the grocery store, he was staring at me telling me he recognized me even after some years.

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  8. The first book I ever borrowed from a library was “Anne of Green Gables”. I was about 9.
    Middle of winter, Winnipeg(prairies) brrr!
    The library was about a mile away.
    It was the due day. It was snowing with wind, but not a blizzard, probably -10f. Normal for Winnipeg winter.
    Sun set about 5:00pm.,and it was dark after dinner (about 6:30)when my parents reminded me the book was due.
    As the library was open until 8, I had to go.
    It was one of the most miserable walks of my life. I was in frozen tears when I got home.
    I learned the importance of returning library books on time.

    Then there was the time in 2010 when the crack smoking mayor of Toronto, and his brother Doug (now our premier) (Tweedledum & Tweedledee) wanted to shut down our useless libraries.

    People went nuts. Margret Atwood spoke out against them and when they were asked what they thought about what Atwood had said, their collective response was “Who?”.

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  9. My Dad loved reading! Loved books! I do too! My dad took me to the Library for the first time when. I was just a toddler. I recall sitting on his knee while he read to me. It was A Victorian built red brick building in Crystal Palace (Upper Norwood), South East London. When I was researching for my first degree I was lucky enough to visit the British Library at St Pancras to search the India Office Records. An interesting post!

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    • Thank you, 1962liola! Tremendous to have had a parent who loved reading and with whom you shared wonderful book and library experiences! And a nice, older, brick library building makes things even better. 🙂

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  10. My mother was a librarian, first in elementary school libraries while my sister and I were young; later, she worked as a reference librarian at a public library. That made librarians special people to me. My most exciting (!) library experience was at college. I was assigned to read “King Lear,” and I honestly had no clue what it was about. Shakespeare’s English is always difficult, even with an annotated version of a play, so I decided to go to our undergrad library’s comfy, armchair-filled audio section and listen to it on records while I read it. (I think Paul Scofield was Lear in that vinyl version.) So I sat there for three hours, my eyes following the text in my book, my ears filled with magnificent actors speaking the lines, and, very appropriately, a huge thunderstorm raging outside the library. I’ve loved that play ever since!

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    • Thank you, Kim! Wonderful that your mother was a librarian! (Two of my wife’s sisters were career librarians, in Texas and Michigan.)

      And what a fantastic “King Lear” experience you had that you described so well! Definitely one of those memories a person never forgets.

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  11. Hi Dan, like you, I also used libraries extensively as a girl. I remember I had 7 library cards, 4 of mine and 3 of my sister’s, and I used yo take out 7 books twice a week. I used to cycle to the library. I also used the libraries at school. Our public
    Libraries aren’t as good now as they receive less financial support but the do still exist at least.

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    • Thank you, Rosaliene! Yes, libraries are so important for young minds — and older ones, too. 🙂 Glad you have fond memories of the windows that libraries opened for you; I imagine libraries are among the reasons why you (and others here) write so well!

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  13. What a lovely post, Dave, takes me back to my childhood.
    Growing up , my Brother is ten years older than me. He was fascinated with the history of world wars. Of course I had no interest in those.
    When I was a teenager, it was sort of fascinating to be a member of the British Council Library, where I was able to find a lot of books.
    it was also a show-off thing, as teens would brag about being a member of the library.
    Then riding on a public bus, we would show off the cover of the books .

    So silly…

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    • Thank you, Bebe! Interesting memories! Like your brother, I also often read about wars as a kid; I guess it was partly a boy thing. I thought wars were as exciting as they were tragic; I was obviously dumb in certain ways back then. 🙂

      And some kids do like to show off!

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      • Nice personal backstory on libraries, Dave. I will say I miss the more “hallowed halls” feel in a library, when one had to whisper, when quiet was,for the most part, the main sounds save hearing turning pages. Now many neighborhood libraries are more community centers,people congregate,talk loudly, engage in various programs. Many younger people would not know,back in the day,one would be more respectful,thus limited noise, to help others concentrate on reading, studying, etc. I am,still,thankful for my local library and so many with grandeur to visit, learn and explore.

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        • Thank you, Michele! Very well said! And great observations about how many libraries have changed to become noisier, more multidimensional spaces — changes which of course have their good points and their bad points.

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  14. The Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building in the Library of Congress is an architectural masterpiece. Regrettably I’ve only been inside this building once many decades ago.

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    • Thank you, Anonymous! I think I was in there once, too, years ago, but I’m not sure.

      It goes without saying that there are some impressive buildings in DC, even as many of the leaders who have occupied those buildings haven’t been as impressive. 🙂

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  15. One of my favorite libraries is in the small town of Cable, Wisconsin. It’s inside a(n) historical log cabin complete with fireplace. I hope the books don’t burn! Anyway, I’d love to work in a place like that in my retirement years.

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  16. I have always loved libraries. In a library, you do not only meet millions of characters and stories withi n the book covers, you also meet people from all walks of life.

    Libraries are so vital to communities that want to grow and thrive, as anyone is welcome to sit down, open a book and learn something.

    I find libraries to be important pillars of democracy, and whenever I can, I visit them in other countries as well. I especially like the New York public library – you feel submersed by history in there. When I lived in Berlin, I would spend many hours in the very large Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Though it was so big, one had to get there early to get a seat.

    It is such a wonderful feeling to study or read in a library. Though you are alone with your books, you are also together with all the others in there. You”re all enjoying or struggling with the written word – it is lovely to feel that kind of connection with people you might never meet in any other way than in the library.

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  17. Well apart from the one I got sacked from, Dundee’s old Central one was amazing. It shared with the museum in the Gothic now called the McManus Galleries. I don’t know how they got the amount in and up the amazing outside staircase was what was known as ‘the Ref.’ As in the reference library where the labyrinthine passageways down a spiral staircase behind the main desk were home to every ref book under the sun you were not allowed to remove. Books it took the person on the desk half an hour to find. Also home, I gather to those on the look out for a chance meeting…. Aye the new Wellgate lib while wonderful is nothing like that. Then there’s the libraries I’ve seen in Prague that you are not allowed into but can glimpse home to thosuands of ancient books and manuscripts. The Strahov and the Klementinum. Great post.

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  18. My first library love was in grade school, which was also my first library experience since all the kindergarten students would nap there. I remember looking up from my place on the floor at all the bookshelves surrounding me and I thought to myself I’m going to read all those books *sigh* ha, what an enormous undertaking. Little did I know there would be many more books added to it. I remember my dad helped me get my first public library card, and how much he revered books. Later in life, I became a member of LVA (literacy volunteers of America), and helped teach adults to read. I also did volunteer work at the library in my daughter’s grade school helping students with the card catalogue, checking out their books, etc. I’ve loved libraries all my life. Haven’t ever visited a very big library, but the library where I go now, Polk County Library in Arkansas is the fifth oldest library in the state, of course it’s undergone quite a few changes. One library I would want to visit if I had a library dream wish would be this one, of course, I would need some help with translations:
    https://stillunfold.com/history/is-existence-of-the-great-library-of-alexandria-still-a-mystery
    Thanks for the post Dave, and the walk down memory lane. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Glad you mentioned an elementary-school library. They can be so…cute (among other things). And, as you noted, a place to dream of future reading — and more. I only have a vague memory of my elementary-school library, but the ones in my two daughters’ respective elementary schools were quite nice.

      Getting one’s first library card — a wonderful memory! Having a book-loving parent or parents — also wonderful, as was being a library volunteer and a literacy volunteer!

      Just thinking about that Alexandria library is awe-inspiring.

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  19. Good topic, Dave; and what a lot of interesting library memories!
    We lived in rural spots when I was a kid, so the libraries I knew then were the ones in schools. But I do have good memories of the libraries at the University of British Columbia, especially the Old Main Library, which has crept in disguise into some of my books. It is (or was) an old building with lots of nooks and crannies to hole up in and study, or even snooze.
    I actually worked as a librarian from 1980 to 2016, at the University of Saskatchewan and the Greater Victoria Public Library, so I know libraries from the inside and outside.

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  20. Dave – I enjoyed visiting libraries, past and present, with you today. Like you, I believe libraries are vital institutions that support education, foster community engagement, and preserve our collective knowledge. They hold our stories! When you mentioned that you visited “Carnegie” Libraries, you brought back a profound memory. In 2015, I had the privilege of visiting the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum, in Dunfermline, Scotland.

    I knew Andrew Carnegie was one of the richest men in the US during his time, but I did not know the extent of his humble beginnings and limited opportunities. Books were his lifeline. His belief and dedication to promoting education and literacy prompted him to sponsor 2,500 libraries worldwide. He never forgot his roots. His quote: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced” is written prominently on a door archway of the museum. There is a modern park was once called Pittencrieff Estate that is close to the museum. In 1902, Andrew Carnegie bought Pittencrieff House and Estate from Colonel James Maitland Hunt. Carnegie gave this estate to the people of Dunfermline.

    Thank you for another great post that reminded me that philanthropy, big or small, gives great benefit to society.

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Excellent comment with lots of interesting information! I suppose some super-wealthy people become philanthropic partly to whitewash bad reputations, but, whether that was the case with Andrew Carnegie or not, he certainly did the world a major service with all those libraries. Great that you visited the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum!

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      • Dave – visiting the museum was an eye opening for me. Andrew Carnegie was unusual in that he wanted to give away his entire fortune before he died but had $30 million left at the time of his death in August 1919. He did distribute $350 million but he died broken-hearted. As a pacifist, he wanted to achieve world peace. He supported the founding of the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1903, and gave $10 million to found the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910. But WWI devastated him as it did many.

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      • The steel magnate required coal, the mines of which, in his day, employed children as young as eight. Ironic that profits extracted, in part, from child labor in Appalachia would be later employed to build libraries for the use of children mostly elsewhere.

        Also, Carnegie was one of the owners of the country club whose earthen dam failed through lack of maintenance and caused the Johnstown Flood. Despite lives (2209) and property lost

        “Individuals who sued all lost in court, and some even went bankrupt. Though the American legal system soon adopted precedents that made it possible to hold defendants liable for their modifications to land, the magnates behind the Johnstown Flood walked off scot-free.”

        https://www.history.com/news/how-americas-most-powerful-men-caused-americas-deadliest-flood

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        • Thank you, jhNY, for the comment and link! I had a vague memory that Andrew Carnegie — like most hugely rich men then and now — also had quite a negative side but didn’t have a chance to refresh my memory with some online research. Yes, his philanthropy was at least partly “reputation washing.” And if he were really, sincerely charitable, he would have done so more anonymously.

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  21. I remember my first visit to a library in Attleboro, Mass. when I was three or four years old. I don’t remember the exterior of the building, just the children’s section. I was so excited to see an entire room just for books children would like to read! (Cat in the Hat, I’m talking about you.)

    The Cary Library in Lexington, Mass. is special to me because my great-great uncle Willard designed it. I’ve been to the library and can attest to how beautiful the Uncle Willard section is (the later additions not beautiful at all.

    From the library’s website:

    “1906
    The library moved into new quarters at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Clarke Street, where it stands today. The building was the gift of Miss Alice Butler Cary in honor of her foster mother. Originally designed by architect Willard Dalrymple Brown, the building faces the Minuteman Statue and the historic Lexington Battle Green.

    Local architect Willard Dalrymple Brown (1871-1944) graduated from the MIT School of Architecture in 1894 and set up his own practice in Boston in 1902. Brown’s highly original early works reflect the various influences that were prevalent during the eclectic times, including Colonial Revival, Shingle, and Craftsman. The use of fieldstone, stucco, and shingles is common to many of his designs. (https://www.lexingtonma.gov/historical-commission/comprehensive-cultural-resources-survey/pages/suburbanization-1870-1915) The library building echoes the massive fieldstone base of the Minuteman statue just across the street. (Grady, The Architecture of Willard D. Brown, pp. 22-23)”

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  22. Until recently, I lived most my life in very small towns. The libraries were typically tiny, either in old houses or connected to the fire station (where I always worried the fire alarm would ring:) I also lived in one town where the only library was in the public school. But the suburb where I live now has a huge, new library, which makes me long for those of my past…

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  23. The town where I was born and lived until I was 10 didn’t have a library. My mother took us to the Carnegie Library Bookmobile when it visited every other Tuesday. I remember taking out children’s books and Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Later, they turned the old train station into a library, and parked a caboose next to the station to serve as a children’s library.

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