Libraries - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

New London Public Library (1892)

The New London whaling merchant, Henry Philemon Haven, who died in 1876, left a bequest to be used for charitable purposes. His trustees used the funds to build a library, completed in 1892 and designed by the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge (H.H. Richardson‘s successor firm). The architects sent George Warren Cole, who eventually established his own firm in the city, to New London to supervise three simultaneous projects: the Library, Williams Memorial Institute and Nathan Hale School. The Richardsonian Romanesque Public Library of New London building features a design similar to the libraries designed by Richardson and contrasts a Milford granite construction with brownstone trim.

Ansonia Library (1892)

We begin June with libraries, as we declare this week to be Library Week at Historic Buildings of Connecticut! Our first library is the Ansonia Library, designed by the architect George Keller, who was responsible for many other interesting buildings in the state. Caroline Phelps Stokes, granddaughter of Anson Greene Phelps, who founded Ansonia, donated the library, buying the land for it on the corner of South Cliff Street and Cottage Avenue. She traveled from New York to supervise the construction of the building, which utilized Longmeadow freestone with a foundation of granite from Ansonia. In a gable, above the library’s entryway, is a relief sculpture of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and knowledge. The Ansonia Library was completed in 1892, but did not open its doors until 1896, because the town government was initially reluctant to provide the $1,500 per year required for the library’s operating expenses.

Bill Memorial Library (1890)

The Bill Memorial Library in Groton, adjacent to Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, was founded by Frederic Bill, a publisher and linen goods manufacturer, who was born in the part of Groton which is now the town of Ledyard and who retired to a farm in Groton on the Thames River. The library, dedicated to the memory of Bill’s sisters, Eliza and Harriet, began in 1888, as a room in Groton’s First District Schoolhouse. The Bill Library building, designed by the Worcester architect, Stephen C. Earle, was dedicated in 1890. Bill expanded the library in 1907, enlarging the main reading room and providing space for a natural history museum. The library was again expanded in 1994. After the death of his first wife, in 1894, Bill married Julia 0. Avery, the libary’s first librarian.

Saxton B. Little Free Library (1800)

When Columbia’s library, called the Saxton B. Little Free Library, had outgrown its 1903 building, a farmhouse across the road, adjacent to Columbia Green and built around 1800, was completely remodeled to become the library’s new and expanded home. The house had belonged to Gladys Rice Soracchi, who had been head librarian from 1959 to 1975 (her mother, Lillian Rice, had preceded her as head librarian from 1908-1959). At one time, the house had served as inn.

Southington Historical Center (1902)

In 1900, a small library opened in the Southington Town Hall, but money was soon raised to construct a library building on Main Street. Completed in 1902, this original library building is a neoclassical structure built of of glazed terra cotta brick and granite. In 1917, Emma Bradley Yeomans Newell, a wealthy philanthropist, donated money for the addition of a “historical wing” to the library. The wing, not actually built until 1930, was named the Sylvia Bradley Memorial, in honor of the wife of Amon Bradley and grandmother of the notable Southington citizen, Bradley Barnes. The Southington Historical Society, founded in the 1960s, housed its collections and met in the wing. A new library was constructed in 1974 and the old building then became a museum called the Southington Historical Center. It recently received a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain to complete renovations on the building.

The Oliver Mather House (1777)

Colonel Oliver Mather was born in 1749 and married Jemima Elsworth, the sister of Oliver Ellsworth, in 1778. Their eldest son, also named Oliver, graduated from Yale in 1799. The Mather House, on Broad Street in Windsor, was built the year before the colonel’s marriage. Mather died in 1829 and around 1840 the house was remodeled, adding a heavy balustrade along the roof and above a square hip-roofed entry porch. In 1901, the building became the home of the Windsor Public Library (founded in 1895). Early on, the librarian lived in the house and the library was in a one-story addition to the house. Further additions have since been made and the front facade has been restored to a colonial appearance.

Sterling Memorial Library (1927)

Designed by James Gamble Rogers to resemble a Gothic cathedral, but with a sixteen-story tower of book stacks, Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library is an imposing structure with rich ornamentation. Construction began in 1927 and the building was completed in 1930. There have been various additions made to the library over the years, including the 1968-1971 construction of the underground Cross Campus Library (now renamed the Bass Library). In 1992, the section of High Street in front of the library was closed to vehicles and was landscaped.