The New York Public Library will be closed from May 26 to May 28.
Free Circulating Libraries.
Manuscripts and Archives Division
The records of the various independent circulating libraries have been brought together to form Record Group 4, Free Circulating Libraries. These records cover the period prior to each library's consolidation with NYPL. The majority of the records in this collection are for the New York Free Circulating Library and the Aguilar FreeLibrary. Only a few items exist for Cathedral, Harlem, Maimonides, New York Free Circulating Library for the Blind, and Tottenville Libraries.
During the last quarter of the 19th century a number of separate and independent libraries, formed mostly by private charitable or religious organizations - but generally free and open to the public - were established throughout New York City. The largest of these free, circulating libraries was the New York Free Circulating Library. Formed in 1878 for a church sponsored sewing class, the NYFCL grew throughout Manhattan to a system of 11 branches in 1899. The Aguilar Free Library was begun in1886 to serve a mostly immigrant, Jewish and working classpublic on the East Side of Manhattan. It consisted of 4 branches at the time of its consolidation with the New York Public Library in 1903.
Eventually there were 14 such independent libraries in thethree boroughs of the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island. As popular as these libraries became with a book-starved public, they suffered from both a lack of coordination andcut-backs of municipal support. The New York Free Circulating Library had discussed the idea of consolidation as early as 1886. In 1895, the newly incorporated New York Public Library (NYPL) was established as a noncirculating reference/research library. But from the very beginning, its trustees left open the possibility that it could establish "such libraries as it deemed advisable."
In 1900, due to the financial pressures mentioned above, aformal consolidation between NYPL and NYFCL took place. But it was not until Andrew Carnegie's 1901 offer of $5.2 million to construct 65 library branches in greater New York that the consolidation movement gained momentum. Between Carnegie's gift, the persuasiveness of Arthur Bostwick (NYPL's first Chief of Circulation), and the City's financial pressures, by 1906 all consolidations were complete.
Among first to enter action. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division.
One of 700,000 pictures in the NYPL Digital Gallery
NYPL Photostore