Old Danbury Library (1878)

The former home of the Danbury Library, located at 256 Main Street, was built in 1876-1878 and served as the city’s library until the current  building was erected at 170 Main Street in 1970. Beginning in 1771, there had been several successive library organizations in Danbury, the last of which disbanded in the 1850s. As related in James Montgomery Bailey’s History of Danbury, Conn. (1896), the creation of a permanent library was

substantially the gift of one family, that of the late E. Moss White, [a successful farmer and merchant] of Danbury. The late William Augustus White, of Brooklyn, son of E. Moss White, by his last will and testament bequeathed the sum of $10,000, to be paid five years after his decease, for the establishment of a public library in his native borough of Danbury. The Legislature of Connecticut, at its session in 1869, passed an act incorporating the Danbury Library, which act was approved by the Governor, June 5th, 1869. On June 1st, 1870, Alexander M. White, of Brooklyn, brother of William Augustus White, and sole executor of his will, placed at the disposal of the trustees of the library the house on Main Street, in which he was born and in which his parents died, to be used for library purposes until a suitable building could be erected upon the premises.

The E. Moss White White Homestead, erected in 1790, housed the library until 1876. At that point, Alexander M. White (who was a partner in Danbury’s leading hatters’ fur processing firm)  donated the house and land to the library. With his brother, George Granville White, he provided the funds necessary to move the house to a rear lot and erect a brand new library building in its place. Designed by architect Lorenzo Wheeler, the Danbury Library opened in 1878. It became a free library in 1893. Initially, the downstairs rooms were rented for offices with the library on the second story. Later, the lower level was converted into the Children’s Room. In the 1930s, artist Charles Federer of Bethel, painted murals depicting fairy tales in the Children’s Room as a W.P.A. project. Today the former library building is the Danbury Music Center. In 1994, the Marian Anderson Recital Hall was dedicated on the second floor.