Windham Free Library (1832)

Windham Free Library, on the Green in Windham Center, was originally built, on the former site of the county court house, as the Windham Bank in 1832. The bank moved its operations to Willimantic in 1879 and other commercial establishments soon followed, as Windham Center changed from being a business district into a primarily residential area. The Greek Revival building then stood vacant until it was converted into a museum, displaying a temporary “Exhibition of Relics,” on the occasion of Windham’s bi-centennial, celebrated in 1892. Now it serves as Connecticut’s smallest freestanding library. Established in 1897, the Library displays historical artifacts, including the Windham Bacchus, carved out of wood by British prisoners of war, one of whom was a ship’s carpenter, who were being held in the Windham jail in 1776. They carved the Figure of Bacchus as a parting gift, at the time of their escape, for their widowed landlady, who was also a tavern keeper.

T. A. Hungerford Memorial Library (1909)

Theodore Alfred Hungerford, the son of a local merchant, was born in Harwinton in 1838. He later became successful in the New York publishing business. In 1903, Hungerford’s nephew, Newman Hungerford, convinced him to endow a library as his memorial in his home town. The T. A. Hungerford Memorial Library, including (according to legend) a tomb for Mr. Hungerford in the basement, was completed in 1909. Although it is no longer the town’s public library, it continues to serve as a museum of the town’s history, with a collection of artifacts begun by Newman Hungerford.

New Britain Public Library (1901)

William F. Brooks designed the building of the New Britain Institute library, now the New Britain Public Library, built in 1900-1901 on the corner of High and West Main streets. The New Britain Institute was founded in 1853 to promote a series of lectures and establish a library and reading room. The library occupied various rented quarters, including the Russwin Hotel (now New Britain’s City Hall), until bequests from Dr. Lucius B. Woodruff and Cornelius B. Erwin allowed the current building to be built. The Library building is constructed of yellow brick and has elaborate terra-cotta reliefs. This structure once also housed the New Britain Institute’s art collection, which was moved in 1937 to a house on Lexington Street and is now the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Beach Memorial Library (1900)

The Beach Memorial Library, on Main Street in Newtown, was built in 1900. It was the gift of Rebecca D. Beach, a descendant of Rev. John Beach, the first minister of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown. John Francis Beach, another Beach descendant, laid the building‘s cornerstone. It served as a library until 1932, when the Cyrenius H. Booth Library opened. The former library then became a private residence. The house was later home to John Reed, who served as Newtown‘s Superintendent of Schools for twenty years.

Frederick H. Cossitt Library (1891)

Frederick Henry Cossitt was born in Granby in 1811, but later settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he ran a wholesale dry goods business. In 1859, he moved to New York, where he was involved in real estate, insurance, and banking. Before he died in 1887, Cossitt had expressed a desire to build libraries in both Granby and Memphis and his heirs carried out his wishes. The Cossitt Library in Memphis was built in 1893. The other Cossitt Library, at 388 North Granby Road in Granby, was built in 1891, across the street from the house where Cossitt had been born eighty years before. The library has recently been renovated to reinforce the main floor and reconstruct the ground floor entrance. Cossitt’s daughter Helen married Augustus D. Juilliard and on their deaths, the couple left $12 million to found what would become the Julliard School.

Taylor Memorial Library (1895)

The first library in Milford was established in 1745 and belonged to the First Church. The city’s first secular library began with the chartering of the Milford Lyceum in 1858. The Milford Lyceum Library was eventually dissolved in 1894, when the Taylor Memorial Library was founded. Dedicated in 1895, the Taylor Library was the gift of Henry Augustus Taylor, a financier and philanthropist. It is constructed of local fieldstone, red sandstone and yellow brick. The design of the Richardsonian Romanesque building was based on that of H.H. Richardson’s Crane Memorial Library in Quincy, Massachusetts. In 1976, the new Milford Public Library was opened at the corner of New Haven Avenue and Shipyard Lane, officially replacing the Taylor Library. The old library building was converted to office space and is now home to the Milford Chamber of Commerce.

Sadd Memorial Library (1906)

The Library Journal, Vol. 31, No. 10 (October 1906), reported that:

The library recently built at a cost of $4000 by Mr. H. W. Sadd, of Wapping, Ct., as a memorial to the Sadd family, one of the first to settle in “Wapping parish,” a part of the town of South Windsor, was dedicated on Sept. 19. […] The library is built of blocks of cement, made in the cellar from sand dug from a hillside near by, is well lighted and spacious, heated by a furnace and well equipped for the needs of the neighborhood for years to come. The town of South Windsor voted in 1898 to establish and maintain a public library, which was kept in the basement of the Baptist church until lately, when it was moved to a room in the large new school-house. The Wapping Library is a very flourishing and successful branch, receiving books from the main library, which are changed every few months. A Chautauqua circle, which has existed for a long time, has been a most valuable and stimulating influence in creating a desire for a library.

In the 1960s, the Wapping Library collection was moved from the Sadd Memorial Library building to a shopping center storefront and consolidated with books from the Wood Memorial Library. These were moved in 1979 to the current South Windsor Public Library. The old Wapping library building now houses offices.