The 1908 Seward Park Branch Library - 192 East Broadway

photo by Jim Henderson

Born in the attic of a tiny house in Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie's family could not afford a book.  According to the director of the New York Public Library in 1902, the young Carnegie promised, "that if he ever obtained the means he would establish a public library."  True to his word, in 1901 Andrew Carnegie, now a multimillionaire, offered the City of New York a gift of $5.2 million to build free circulating libraries.  The condition was that the city would provide the land and maintain the libraries.   

On June 6, 1908, the Record & Guide reported that work on the foundations of the Seward Park Branch, one of the Carnegie libraries, had begun.  The branch was designed by Babb, Cook & Welch--the firm that in 1899 had designed Carnegie's 64-room neo-Georgian mansion.  (The firm, at the time, was Babb, Cook & Willard.  Daniel W. Willard left the firm in 1908 and Winthrop A. Welch took his place.)  Perhaps as a nod to the philanthropist, their design for the Seward Park Branch would have striking similarities to the Carnegie Mansion.

A turn-of-the-century postcard depicts the mansion.

The Record & Guide noted, "The library is one of the largest and most important of the branches yet to be built, serving as it does a very crowded district of the city."  The Lower East Side neighborhood had filled with mostly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Like Carnegie's, the families were too poor to afford books, and would heavily rely on the library.

The guide said, "The Jefferson st. front of the structure will be the most important and faces on Seward Park; but the two entrances are in wings on East Broadway and Division st."  One entrance was for adults, the other for children.  A rusticated Indiana limestone base would uphold three floors of red brick.

The Record & Guide said, "The interior finish will be of quartered white oak with rift grain Georgia pine floors and painted plaster surfaces."  On the first and third floors were the adults' circulation and reading rooms.  The children's department took up the entire second floor.  The roof behind the handsome stone balustrade was not wasted.  It would hold "a large out-of-door reading room, arranged to be well shaded by awnings when required and provided with electric lights for use in the evening," said the Record & Guide.

photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The Seward Park Branch library was dedicated in the summer of 1909.  The ceremonies included school children who greatly impressed a New York Public Library official.  On December 26, 1909, The Sun quoted him saying:

Opening exercises usually have nothing of novelty about them.  This one had a novelty--the music supplied from an East Side public school.  The selections were of the best, and for young boys and girls whose parents had been but a few years in this country the execution was marvellous [sic].

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The school district's superintendent, Miss Richman, encapsulated the neighborhood and the children who would be using the library:

Not more than two per cent of the people in the districts which I superintend are of non-Jewish parentage.  At least 86 per cent of them are Russian Jews.  The others come from the various smaller countries of southeastern Europe.  Only a few of the parents of our school children were born on this side of the water.  Our pupils are only one generation removed from Russia, and the language of their homes, the synagogues and the shops which they frequent is some form of Yiddish.

Both the children and their parents were thirsty for knowledge.  The New York Times reported on May 9, 1913, "The annual report says that the Seward Park Branch of the library reads 425,571 books a year--that is to say, the readers take them home from the library and into their homes."  The article noted that of that amount, "only 51 per cent was fiction" and, "At Seward Park there are sterner uses for life and time than the reading of fictitious weal and woe."  It added, "Nothing short of an inspection of the Seward Park Library actually at work in its polyglot neighborhood will convey any idea of its enormous social power."

Throngs of children file into the second floor Children's Department.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

While they felt welcomed within the library which made books available in Russian, German, Yiddish and English, the immigrant readers were facing conspicuous discrimination outside the library's walls.  In his June 30, 1911 annual report, Federal Commissioner of Immigration William Williams denounced the Eastern European inflow, calling the refugees, "backward races with customs and institutions widely different from ours and without the capacity of assimilating with our people as did the early immigrants."  Despite this, the New York Public Library report that year said the Seward Park Branch circulated more books than "any other branch library in the world."

The children's interest in reading was reflected in the Seward Literary Club, organized in 1911.  The Bulletin of the New York Public Library explained in 1914 that it "is composed of Jewish boys who have met together for three years at the Seward Park branch to exchange reviews of books they are reading, to tell stories, and to hold occasional debates."

An article in The New York Times on March 9, 1913 flew in the face of William Williams's bigoted remarks of two years earlier.  "It is not far-fetched to say that many of the statesmen of the future are now in the making at Seward Park library," it said.

The open-air, rooftop reading room, sheltered by canvas awnings.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The library was, as well, a cultural center for the neighborhood.  In April 1914, librarian Frank Goodell worked with the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society to organize an exhibition of figures of immigrant citizens.  The New York Times said the presentation was meant, "To demonstrate the serious character of the Jewish immigrants from Russia and Rumania and their eagerness for self-improvement and assimilation of American influence."

The cultural programs consciously related to the neighborhood demographics.  On December 30, 1917, The Sun reported, "At the Seward Park Branch Public Library there is now open an exhibition of the work of Nathaniel Dolinsky, a comprehensive collection of paintings and drawings."  Dolinsky was born in Russia in 1890 and at 23 was the youngest artist to be exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show.

Adults check out books in the Circulation Department.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

A letter to the New-York Tribune published on October 20, 1922, pointed out the sad ratio between the voraciousness of the children and the supply of books.  "There are sometimes but six copies of a book and sixty or seventy demands daily from school children," said the writer.

A crush of juvenile readers wait at the desk in the Children's Department. from the collection of the New York Public Library

In November 1959, four filmmakers produced a motion picture, The Lower East Side and the Library--Yesterday and Today, in celebration of the Seward Park Branch's 50th anniversary.  The Villager noted, "One factor shown to be constant, however, is that neighborhood residents and patrons of the library are still ethnically varied."

The film highlighted the changing demographics of the Lower East Side.  "An example of this continuing 'melting pot' aspect of Lower East Side life," said the article, "is a shot of three very different neighborhood stores standing side by side--a Jewish butcher shop, a Chinese laundry, and a Spanish 'bodega.'"

As the face of the branch's patrons changed, so did the library's outreach.  In the third quarter of the century, films were screened for children, like The Ugly Duckling on August 3, 1975.

The East Broadway entrance.  photo by Beyond My Ken

More than a century after it opened its doors, the Seward Park Branch library remains an integral part of the much changed Lower East Side neighborhood.  Babb, Cook & Welch's dignified structure is a symbol of the philanthropy of another poor immigrant who thrived in his new home of America.