Connecticut's Library Heritage
Mary Baldwin
by Ann Wrege
Although there had been attempts to start a library early in the nineteenth century, the modern Cheshire Public Library was born in a horse-drawn buggy in 1891. The midwife was a Miss Mary Baldwin, a founding member of the Village Improvement Society. Mary Baldwin, along with her friend Mary Dickerman, and drawn by her horse Dixie, drove up and down the streets of Cheshire appealing to residents for donated books. During the next year, they built their collection, secured a room in a local school and were ready for business in 1892. The Cheshire Public Library was open every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, dispensing books at five cents per volume for a week's rental. Daily attendance approaching 8 or 10 users was considered excellent. Miss Baldwin drew a first year salary of $25 and held the post of librarian for the next 29 years.
In its infancy, the small library was moved several times. Miss Baldwin's quest for a permanent home for the collection was resolved in 1911 when Dr. George Williams offered the rent-free use of a property on Main Street. This location is still the home of Cheshire Public Library. The land was purchased in 1937 by the Library Association (as the Village Improvement Society became known) and finally turned over to the town in 1957. The Williams property was an imposing white clapboard Greek revival style home, which proved adequate for the library into the 1950s. It even provided an apartment for the librarian to "live over the shop." In 1958 and 1961, colonial style brick additions were made to the Williams house as library functions grew in size and scope. By 1970, the old house had outgrown its usefulness and was to be demolished. This made way in 1975 for an ultramodern brick building, which was attached to the earlier colonial style wing. The usable square footage reached 20,000. The Cheshire Public Library, serving a population of 21,000, seemed ready for all the future would bring.
What the future brought was enormous prosperity and growth to the town. The library began to outgrow its space within 10 years. Technology brought electrical needs heretofore undreamed of. Seating was sacrificed to make room for collections in a wide variety of new formats. As the building had no elevator, legal requirements forced the construction of a complicated and ugly series of exterior ramps. This same deficit forced library staff to transport 500 books per day via an ancient dumb waiter. The single large office became a joke, then a nightmare, as staff exceeded 20 persons.
By the late 1980s plans for expansion began again. Although Main Street had grown much more congested in the years since 1911, it was still the location of choice. The challenge facing architects King and Tuthill in 1991 was finding a way to expand the building without exceeding its existing footprint. A clever plan was devised which involved literally peeling the back of the U-shaped library off and expanding up and out into the area filled with concrete ramps. A campaign was begun to sell this $3+ million expansion and renovation to the voters.
The long boom period of the 1980s, which had brought such growth to the library, stagnated by 1992. The November election proved that Cheshire's residents were not willing to go into debt for a library bond issue. The library was forced to forego still more seating and to turn its community meeting rooms to other functions. A second informational campaign was begun. This time a successful vote was achieved at a special referendum in May 1994.
As final design plans were settled, it became obvious that this was the library Cheshire had needed all along. Room for 135,000 items, work space for new technologies and a growing staff, a functional elevator, areas for special formats, and rooms in which to study, listen, watch, play, compute and surf the net. All this was to be enclosed in a simple architectural style that would tie together the four separate construction projects of Cheshire Library's history.
A library that would truly dazzle Mary Baldwin opened its doors to 32,600 square feet of functional space in August 1996. Come see this library at the Libratects meeting on Thursday April 23, 1998, at 9:30 a.m. People involved in the design and construction of the library will be available to answer questions. (Also ask to see Mary Baldwin's desk. Although not in the least ergonomically correct, it is the joy of its user, the present director.)