History of the RPL

A Short History of the Reading Public Library

“Reading in Reading”

(an excerpt from At Wood End, Reading, Massachusetts, 1644-1994, A Pictorial History by Reading 350th Book Committee. This commemorative volume may also be purchased at the library and other locations. )

Although Reading’s first public library was not instituted until 1868, the town has a 200-year library tradition, starting with the 1791 founding of the private Federal Library. Located in the front room of Rev. Peter Sanborn’s parish house at the corner of Woburn and Lowell streets on the site of the 1918 library building, the library’s 60 members paid an annual dollar membership plus 25 cents in annual dues. Rev. Sanborn retained his position as librarian until 1814, when his influence diminished due to public opposition to his doctrinal and personal views. In 1817, the library was incorporated with John Weston as the new librarian. In 1831, the Federal Library disbanded and sold 273 books at public auction. For eleven years there appears to have been no library in town until the organization of the Franklin Library on January 1, 1842. Oliver Peabody served as librarian, as well as treasurer and clerk. Its 103 members paid an admission fee of $2 and annual dues of 50 cents until the library’s demise 27 years later. There is little information concerning another library called the Reading Institute Library, except for the fact that it was formed in 1852 and that its annual dues were 50 cents. In 1860 the Agricultural Library was formed with 166 volumes dealing only with animal husbandry, home mechanics, and agriculture; it lasted for four years.

In March 1867 the School Committee’s annual report indicated enthusiastic support for a Reading Public Library. Neighboring towns had libraries, and the School Committee felt it would be beneficial for Reading to follow suit. In 1868, Town Meeting voted to establish a public library in one room of the high school, situated north of the Common. Horace P. Wakefield, a School Committee member, donated $500, and Town Meeting voted to match that sum to finance the new venture. With the advent of the new library, the Agricultural Library and the Franklin Library disbanded and transferred their books to the Reading Public Library.

By 1873 the library had outgrown its room and moved to the southwest corner of Woburn and Lowell streets to the upper room of the C. Warren Perkins house. A few years later, in 1884, the Library Board voted to lease the upper floor of the Bank Building at the corner of Pleasant and Main streets, “reached by a stairway between Danforth’s drugstore and the Cooperative grocery.” In just a few more years another move was needed. Owners of the Odd Fellows Hall on Woburn Street proposed renting the lower floor to the town for the library; the Trustees approved the proposal and paid $470 in annual rent. Through 1905, there were no shelf lists or card catalogues and shelves were closed. In that same year, however, Bertha Brown replaced Lizzie Cox as librarian; hours were then expanded, stacks become open, and the age was lowered to 10 for children.

In 1902, millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie offered Reading $12,500 for a library building with the proviso that the town provide the site and an annual appropriation of $1,250; Town Meeting took no action.

However, things changed a few years later when fire almost destroyed the Odd Fellows building (1911), damaging about 15% of the library’s books and sending the library to the YMCA building on Main Street; this building later became the VFW Hall. The library’s collection totaled 11,959.

The Library Trustees continued petitioning Town meeting for a permanent building, and finally in 1915 the Andrew Carnegie gift, which had increased to $15,000, was accepted; town meeting appropriated another $5,000. The town bought the former Sanborn parsonage at the corner of Lowell and Woburn streets and the adjoining property on Lowell Street for a library and municipal building complex. Despite wartime material and labor shortages, the new library, designed by Adden and Parker, Boston-based architects who lived in Reading, opened on July 3, 1918. At that time both the children’s room and the adult reading room were upstairs; a small lecture hall was available downstairs.

Reading’s appetite for reading soon made the new building too small, so the lecture hall was converted into a children’s room. By the 1940′s, annual reports of the Library Trustees repeatedly noted overcrowded conditions, a problem temporarily resolved in 1950, when an addition to the library was completed. At that time the library housed 29,195 volumes.

Within a decade the cry of crowding was again raised by the trustees. For 20 years, studies, site surveys, architects’ drawings were undertaken, and countless hours spent trying to wrestle a solution to the is problem that wouldn’t go away. With the closing of the Wadlin-designed Highland School in 1981, a window of opportunity existed; it was seized, and in 1984, the Reading Public Library was officially opened, ending the issue of library overcrowding and providing the town with a bright and inviting facility that instantly became a model for other communities seeking new libraries or with older buildings to rehabilitate.