History
The library was officially founded in 1892 by Collis P. Huntington, a Southern Pacific Railroad magnate whose summer home was in nearby Throggs Neck, Bronx. Its origins, however, were in the will of Peter C. Van Schaick, a local philanthropist, who set aside funds from his estate to build a free reading room to be donated to the village of West Chester, (now the Bronx) upon its completion. The library, constructed between 1882 and 1883, was ultimately refused by the local townspeople who did not want to pay for its upkeep. The building sat vacant until Huntington was somehow informed of the stalemate and decided to take over the project. He put on an addition, and the library's doors opened to the public in 1883.
The library took on an important new role in 1930, when Archer M. Huntington, Collis's adopted son and benefactor of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, built an addition to the Huntington Free Library to house the museum's book collection, which was transferred to the library. In 1990, then the museum became the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, the library was not part of that arrangement. In 2004 the American Indian collection was transferred to Cornell University .
Read more about this topic: Huntington Free Library And Reading Room
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)