The 401
LITERARY LOVE
BY LAUREN CLEM
PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF THE PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Book Bash
The Providence Public Library celebrates 150 years as a free resource serving all Rhode Islanders.
W
HAT’ S YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF THE LIBRARY?
For generations of Rhode Islanders, it’ s walking up to the grand stone building on Empire Street in Providence and getting lost inside its antique reading rooms and meandering stacks.
The Providence Public Library is marking 150 years serving the city and all of Rhode Island. The library celebrated its official birthday on April 7, during National Library Week.“ We were chartered not once, but twice,” explains Jack Martin, executive director of PPL. After its initial charter as the Free Public Library, Art Gallery and Museum of Natural History in 1874, the library was rechartered as the Providence Public Library the following year. In 1878, it opened its first location on the second floor of the Butler Exchange Building( roughly where Kennedy Plaza is today) with 10,307 volumes.
Now the library holds more than 350,000 items ranging from ancient cuneiform tablets
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The library’ s original home in the Butler Exchange Building; the library raises money for an addition to the current building in 1931; women leaving the library in 1943; the Nicholson Whaling Collection on display in the Reading Room; the Children’ s Department in 1925.
to The Providence Journal archives to the world’ s second-largest collection of whaling logs. As a nonprofit organization, the library also strives to be a free learning university offering dozens of workshops, classes and resources in English literacy, STEM, small business ownership and other hands-on skills every year.
“ On the one end, we have these extraordinary special collections, and on the other end, we help people address these basic human needs,” says Elizabeth Debs, member and past chair of the board of trustees.
“ As the gaps get bigger, we have to step up more,” she adds.
Unlike most public libraries, PPL receives
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