The library has been based in the former West Front Street home of Sigmund and Bertha Eisner since 1937. Below, the 1880 catalogue of the original Red Bank Mutual Library, started in a Broad Street clothing store, listed only 144 books. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
For years before it was given a magnificent home overlooking the Navesink River, and decades before it was “public,” Red Bank’s library was a hand-to-mouth membership operation kept alive by scrappy volunteers.
That changed 100 years ago next month, when borough voters approved a referendum to make the institution both a publicly owned asset and free to users. In the process, the town joined a wave in which access to information was being “democratized,” said Barbara Pickell, local history librarian and reference department head.
On November 10, the foundation that helps fund the library will kick off a yearlong celebration of the milestone with a reception.
Local history librarian Barbara Pickell recently completed a history of the library itself. Below, the Red Bank Register’s November 14, 1923 report on the outcome of the referendum. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
It’s not the formation of the library that’s being celebrated. That occurred in 1879, when a group of local women opened the “Red Bank Mutual Library” in a corner of Corlies’ Clothing Store at 15 Broad Street. A catalog printed one year later listed just 144 books, available one book at a time to patrons who paid a subscription of $1.50 per year.
Nor is it the anniversary of the library finding its permanent home in a mansion at 84 West Front Street, the former home of industrialist Sigmund Eisner, after years of hopscotching from one downtown address to another, and barely surviving a devastating fire that reduced the collection to just 11 books, all of which were checked out at the time.
All that and more is covered in a soon-to-be-available 35-page history of the library written by Pickell, who shared a draft version with redbankgreen.
Instead, on November 10, the Foundation for the Red Bank Public Library will host a fundraiser and reception to mark the centennial of the public’s embrace of the library.
In November, 1923, as reported by the Red Bank Register (whose archive is digitized and available online via the library), voters by a two-to-one margin approved a public takeover of the institution.
“That is when the public took on tax support for the library and opened it to everybody in the community,” Pickell said in a recent interview. “You didn’t have to pay a subscription or a fee.”
The change helped ensure that the mission of the library continued. At the time, Pickell said, “the women who ran the library were running out of energy, and they were running out of money.”
“As a librarian, I feel very strongly that one of the reasons libraries exist is because we provide access to information, on any subject – both sides of controversial subjects,” she said. As such libraries are one of the few places “where you can get all of that information, not just one side. We go out of our way to really support democracy by supporting free speech.”
“But we also think of ourselves as kind of the equalizers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor: you can still come to the library and have access to all of our material,” Pickell said.
The victory at the polls in 1923 was a stark reversal of an earlier attempt to convert the library.
In 1904, steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie, en route to funding the construction of some 1,679 American libraries – including those in Freehold and Long Branch – had offered to fund the construction of a library building in Red Bank, provided the borough commit to paying $1,000 a year in support.
But a ballot measure on the question “lost badly,” Pickell said, no doubt partly because of the influence of Register publisher John Cook. Though he initially endorse the idea, Cook reversed himself, adopting the view that the money was better spent on recreational facilities for young men to keep them from drinking.
Besides, “one good book in the home is worth fifty in a public library,” Cook said, according to Pickell’s account. Moreover, “the big Sunday newspapers furnish an amount of reading that gives many families all the reading they want.”
In January, 1924, two months after the second referendum, the borough took possession of the Red Bank Library Corporation’s assets, consisting of 10,216 books and $13,028.94 in the bank. The budget for the first year: $3,500.
“Of course, it’s not ‘free.’ It takes money to run a library,” said Pickell. A century later, the borough budget includes tax revenue of $950,000 going to the library. Grants and money raised by the foundation provide additional funding.
The Foundation for the Red Bank Public Library will host its fundraiser and reception Friday, November 10, at 7 p.m., at the library, featuring music, food, speakers, raffles and good company. Tickets are $75 per person, and available here.
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