Library
On April 17, 1900, the Whittier Public Library Board of Trustees held its first meeting in Landrum Smith's drugstore. With an initial collection of 60 books and 200 magazines, the library facilities began in the Woody Building as a reading room, maintained by Mr. Hester in exchange for space for his telegraph office. In 1907, a Carnegie grant funded the construction of the building at Bailey and Greenleaf that many Whittierites fondly remember. As the city expanded, a larger library was needed, and the Friends of the Library organized in 1956 to raise money for a new building. Through their efforts, and those of the board members, librarians, and citizen fund raising groups, the new library was completed at the Washington Avenue site in May 1959. In 1968, service was further expanded with the construction of the Whittwood Branch Library on Santa Gertrudes.
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Famous quotes containing the word library:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn’t.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)