American Public Libraries Great and Small

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    American Public Libraries Great and Small
 Posted by Rachel Arons
In the course of eighteen years, beginning in 1994, the 
California-based photographer Robert Dawson took pictures of hundreds of
 public libraries across the United States. The results are collected in
 his new book, “The Public Library: A Photographic Essay,” to be 
released next month. Many writers have written eloquently about the role
 of libraries in American life (see Mark Twain’s impassioned praise of 
Fairhaven, Massachusetts’ Millicent Library, in the third slide above), 
but Dawson’s project makes a powerful case for how public libraries 
serve communities in every corner of the country. In the introduction, 
he writes, “Public libraries are worth fighting for, and this book is my
 way of fighting.”

All photographs from “Public Library: A Photographic Essay,” by Robert Dawson, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.

Peterborough Town Library; Peterborough, New Hampshire, 2009. 
Established in 1833, this is the first tax-supported library in the 
United States.

Willard Library, Evansville; Indiana, 2011. Built in 1885, this is the 
oldest public library in Indiana. Housed in a spectacular Victorian 
building, it is rumored to be haunted. While photographing a dark corner
 of the interior, I thought I saw the resident ghost. Live GhostCams are
 currently keeping watch at willardghost.com.

Millicent Library; Fairhaven, Massachusetts, 1994. In 1894, Mark Twain 
wrote a letter calling this library “ideal”: “Books are the liberated 
spirits of men, and should be bestowed in a heaven of light and grace 
and harmonious color and sumptuous comfort, like this, instead of in the
 customary kind of public library, with its depressing austerities and 
severities of form and furniture and decoration. A public library is the
 most enduring of memorials…. All other things which I have seen today 
must pass away and be forgotten; but there will still be a Millicent 
Library when by the mutations of language the books that are in it now 
will speak in a lost tongue to your posterity.”

Mill Valley Public Library; Mill Valley, California, 2012.

Mark Twain Branch Library; Detroit, Michigan, 2011. This is one of 
several Detroit-libraries branches that closed in 2011, owing to budget 
cuts.

The Handley Regional Library; Winchester, Virginia, 2011. A Confederate sympathizer built this library after the Civil War.

George Washington Carver Branch Library; Austin, Texas, 2011. Black 
citizens in East Austin strongly advocated for a library in their 
community, and this was the first branch to serve them. The mural is by 
the Austin artist John Fisher.

A library built by former slaves; Allensworth, California, 1995. Allen 
Allensworth was born into slavery, in Kentucky, in 1842. He later became
 a petty officer in the U.S. Navy, a Baptist minister, and a chaplain in
 the U.S. Army, and he founded the colony of Allensworth in Tulare 
County, California, in the early part of the twentieth century. This 
library is a re-creation of the original, in what is now called Colonel 
Allensworth State Historic Park.

A former night club and library; St. Louis, Illinois, 2012. Originally 
built as an Elks Club, this abandoned library was once a popular night 
club, where Miles Davis, who grew up in East St. Louis, got his start.

Central Library; Seattle, Washington, 2009. The Dutch architects Rem 
Koolhaas and Joshua Ramus were the principal designers of this library, 
which opened in 2004.

Richard F. Boi Memorial Library, the first Little Free Library; Hudson, 
Wisconsin, 2012. Todd Boi started the Little Free Library movement as a 
tribute to his mother, who was a book lover and a schoolteacher, by 
mounting a wooden container designed to look like a schoolhouse on a 
post on his lawn. Library owners can create their own boxes, usually 
about the size of a dollhouse, or purchase one from the movement’s Web 
site (littlefreelibrary.org).

The Queens Library bookmobile; New York, 2012. The bookmobile stationed in the Rockaways, after Hurricane Sandy.

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