Library Blog

Happy 260th Birthday!

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The Library was officially founded in April, 1754 by Robert R. Livingston Sr., William Livingston, William Alexander (Lord Stirling), Philip Livingston, John Morin Scott, and William Smith Jr. That makes us 260 years old this month! In honor of the occasion, some bits and pieces from our long history below. For more, see the current issue of Books & People or our book The New York Society Library: 250 Years, available by request at the Circulation Desk.

1772: King George III grants the Library a formal charter. A facsimile of the charter is on permanent display on the main-stair mezzanine between the Second and Third Floors.

1774: The Library’s operations are interrupted by the War for Independence. British troops occupy Manhattan Island from September 1776, endangering the collection. The Library resumes in 1784 in its original space in City Hall.

1788: City Hall is used by the federal government, and the Library is patronized by President George Washington and other American luminaries. Our “First Charging Ledger,” recording their borrowings, has been fully scanned and preserved. Browse through the ledger here to see who belonged and what they read in the early national period.

1832: A Board meeting is adjourned when no Trustees attend during a cholera outbreak.

1835: Washington Irving, author of “Knickerbocker’s” History of New York and Rip Van Winkle, becomes a Trustee.

1840: The Library moves to a much larger building on Broadway at Leonard Street (shown at left). The building is initially shared with the New York Athenaeum; when the Athenaeum closes, its space is rented to major lecturers and performers. Speakers include Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1842 (with Walt Whitman in the audience) and Edgar Allan Poe in 1845. Charles Dickens is among Library visitors in 1842.

1848: Library member Herman Melville takes out Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s Voyage Around the World as a source for his book Mardi (1849). He will later borrow William Scoresby’s Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (1820) and keep it out for almost a year. Moby-Dick is published in 1851.

1928: Willa Cather (My Antonía, Death Comes for the Archbishop) joins the Library, remarking to the desk staff, “I’m by way of being a writer.”

1936: The Library purchases its current building on 79th Street, necessitating an enormous move uptown in 1937. The building was built in 1917 as the family home of John Shillito Rogers. Click here to learn more about the the city and the Library at the time. In that same year, Edith Hall Crowell becomes the first female Head Librarian and immediately recatalogs the collection according to the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

1995: The first New York City Book Awards jury is convened. They will present the first Book of the Year award to Kenneth T. Jackson’s The Encyclopedia of New York City in the spring of 1996. Click here for information on this year’s awards.

Happy birthday, Library!

 

This article was compiled by Kathleen Fox and Sara Holliday.

Disqus Comments