The Creation of California’s Public Libraries

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By Devin Lavelle

Early Years

As the excitement of the California Gold Rush began to pale, transplants who remained in the Golden State sought to reproduce familiar institutions in their new home. This included the opportunity to read for pleasure, to stay informed, and to learn, best served by an emerging East Coast institution: libraries.[i]

California’s missions, which began in the late 1700s, had each long housed a library where “theological and some scientific works were preserved for the benefit of the learned padres,”[ii] but access to these troves was limited.

 Rather, the beginning of public libraries in California can be traced back to 1849 — a year after gold nuggets were first discovered in the Sacramento Valley and a year before California was admitted as the 31st U.S. state. The founding of the Monterey Library Association, by the Reverends Joseph Benton (Congregational) and Samuel Willey (Presbyterian), sought “through a Library and Reading Room, to afford amusement, entertainment, and profit to a large class who, without its aid, would waste their time in the frivolities and questionable pastimes so prevalent in our state.”[iii] The library’s collection included classic and contemporary fiction, history, science, biography, travel and theology, as well as a Spanish-language section by 1854 (when the first catalog was printed) and had grown to 2,500 volumes by 1859. The library charged a fee of $1 per month or $8 per year ($37/$295 in 2024 dollars).

Painting of a historic street lined with wooden buildings, one of which has a tall pole with an American flag in front of it. People and horses walk through the scene.

Outside of Monterey, the only option for Californians looking for a literary diversion was to turn to subscription and social libraries, which required nonmembers (the general public) to pay monthly or quarterly dues to use the library. At the time, these libraries were considered “public” based on Charles Jewett’s definition in his seminal publication, “Notices of Public Libraries in the United States of America,” published in 1851. Prior to the Civil War, free public libraries were rare in the United States, with the first large public library, Boston Public, not opening until 1854.

The public was more familiar with social libraries, which were popular in the eastern United States. As migrants from the East Coast began to lay down roots in California, they wanted libraries to be similar to the ones they had grown up with. This time period also witnessed a number of library associations starting in mining towns and in urbanized cities, but only a handful survived beyond a few years because of funding challenges.

Sacramento was briefly home to California’s second public library, the Mercantile Library of Sacramento. It opened in August 1850 but lasted just two years before being consumed by the Great Fire of 1852.[iv]

San Francisco at the Forefront

San Francisco was the early home to a diverse set of libraries catering to specific groups of people. The Vigilance Committee of San Francisco ignited the push, attempting to found a library in 1851 for its members. The local San Francisco newspaper, the Alta California, though objecting to such a narrow plan for a library, wrote that the prospect offered young men a worthwhile alternative to “the bar room, the billiard table, the gambling saloon, the masquerade, and the retreats of Cyprian wantonness and debaucheries …” as well as “his lonely sleeping apartment in some crowded boarding house.”[v]

Attempting to appeal to a larger audience, the Mercantile Library, backed by future California Chief Justice Joseph B. Crockett and by $4,500 in donations and $3,000 in pledged subscriptions, purchased Gen. Ethan Allen Hitchcock’s private library, the largest on the West Coast, and opened on March 1, 1853. The Mercantile Library made efforts to expand beyond its namesake trade group, writing, “We are all merchants, and this association is open upon the same terms for mechanics, lawyers, doctors as for traders.”[vi]

These entreaties proved unsuccessful in attracting broader membership. Instead, numerous other libraries opened their doors around the city, totaling at least 15 by 1856. The Athenaeum was among the earliest. Formed by African Americans and Caribbean immigrants who were excluded from the Mercantile Library, the classical-focused library opened on September 1, 1853. The YMCA Library Association was notable for becoming the first to offer free access to members and nonmembers alike when it opened in 1854. Also that year, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Library was formed by brothers of its namesake fraternal order. Despite starting in a closet, over the next several years, its collection would come to rival and arguably surpass that of the Mercantile Library.[vii] At its peak in the late 1870s, the Odd Fellows Library collection reached 33,500 volumes with circulation over 100,000. Subscriptions waned over the years, perhaps accelerated by its move out of the city center in 1885 as well as the foundation of the San Francisco Public Library in 1879. The library closed its doors for good in 1896.[viii]

Photograph of interior of a historic building, captioned “Industrial Exhibition, San Francisco, 1874”.

The Mechanics’ Institute was formed by San Francisco’s manufacturers in 1855. Unlike the Mercantile Library’s attempts at broader membership, the Mechanics’ was explicitly limited to working-class mechanics. While it grew more slowly than the Mercantile or Odd Fellows libraries, it would ultimately surpass them, becoming the preeminent subscription library by the time it merged with the Mercantile as the Mechanics’-Mercantile Library.  It continues today as the Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco’s Financial District, having dropped “Mercantile” altogether.

Following San Francisco’s lead, cities around the state began forming their own subscription libraries, several with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at the lead.[ix]

Libraries for Miners

While well-connected groups were establishing libraries in San Francisco, miners in rural Northern California towns also sought the chance to read for pleasure, education and greater connection to the rest of the world.  During the mid-1850s, several library associations were established in mining towns. These libraries provided miners in remote towns and hillsides an accessible answer to the question, “How would you like to winter in such an abode? In a place where there are no newspapers, no churches, lectures, concerts, or theaters; no fresh books … no nothing?”[x] Records reflect collections ranging from 200 to 2,000 (though unrecorded libraries may likely have been smaller). [xi] Mirroring the challenges of urban subscription libraries, initial enthusiasm brought significant growth of mining town library associations during the 1850s, but by the 1860s most had disbanded or lapsed into a state of inactivity. Four regional subscription libraries survived: The Neptune Library (Placerville), Odd Fellows Library (Nevada City), Ladies’ Library (Oroville), and Knights Ferry Library.[xii]

Photo of historic building with a belltower and horse drawn fire wagon.

The Marysville Library Association took a different tact in addressing the perpetual challenges that sent most subscription libraries into decline and dissolution. Founded in 1855, its collection had grown to nearly 500 by the end of its first year but unfulfilled pledges forced the library to close its doors and sell off the furniture before the end of the year. After reorganizing, the library reopened the following year and quickly grew its collection to 2,000 volumes. By 1857, though, internal strife and personal antagonism threatened the library’s subscription base. While threatening dissolution, its board looked to more established entities, such as the city or the Masons, to provide permanent support. The City of Marysville agreed to take on the charge and in 1858 the association gifted its collection to the city, giving free use to all. The Marysville Library remained the only truly public library in California for the next 20 years[xiii] although it was primarily supported by donations and in-kind support with the librarian’s salary being the only substantial cash expense borne by the city.[xiv]

The Rogers Act and the Municipal Public Library

Libraries on the East Coast had been evolving into municipality-supported public libraries since the 1850s. As more did, the public’s understanding of what a “public library” was also began to change. In 1876, with the publication of “Public Libraries in the United States of America: Their History, Condition, and Management,”[xv] William F. Poole forwarded the narrower, more modern definition of public libraries, writing that they were agencies established by public law, supported through local taxation or voluntary gifts, managed as a public trust, and open to each citizen of the city or town that maintained a library.[xvi] Under this new definition, just one California library was included in Poole’s report, the Monterey Library Association, overlooking Marysville. Widely distributed throughout the United States, the report was influential in driving large cities such as Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati to establish municipal-funded public libraries. This, in turn, affected influential people in California, especially in San Francisco, which was experiencing problems financing its large social libraries.[xvii]

With San Francisco’s vaunted subscription libraries beginning to decline, local industrialist Andrew Smith Hallidie, inventor of the cable car and who served as a trustee and president of the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute, tried to convert the Mechanics’ Institute into a public library. When those efforts failed, Hallidie resigned his post as president of the institute and turned his efforts to working with state Senator George H. Rogers to craft legislation that would allow the creation of a municipal public library in San Francisco.[xviii] At the urging of library advocates in other cities, the bill was expanded to cover all municipalities. This yielded legislation that included permissive authorization for any incorporated city or town to levee a property tax “not to exceed one mill on the dollar” (0.1 percent of assessed value) to support public libraries while also creating a board of trustees for the San Francisco Public Library,[xix] including naming its specific members (Senator Rogers and Hallidie being among them) and specifying its powers.[xx]

Library development in the first years under the Rogers Act was modest but still represented substantial growth. After the law’s passage in 1878, the Eureka Free Library, Oakland Free Public Library, Petaluma Public Library and Ventura Public Library joined Marysville’s long-established library and the Los Angeles Public Library, which opened earlier that year, as municipal-supported libraries. In 1879, they were joined by the Alameda Free Public Library, Arcata Public Library, Sacramento Free Public Library and San Francisco Public Library, which was delayed by the County Supervisors’ refusal to authorize funding and an ensuing court case. The San Jose Free Public Library and Hazelton and Stockton Free Public Library opened in 1880, shortly before the law’s expiration, bringing the total to 12 public libraries in California, a six-fold increase from before the Rogers Act was passed.[xxi]

The new California Constitution of 1879 prohibited special legislation, such as the provisions in the original Rogers Act creating the San Francisco Public Library. A new law contained the same basic provisions as the original Rogers Act for cities under 100,000 in population. At the same time it contained provisions applying only to the state’s one city exceeding a population of 100,000, establishing and empowering San Francisco’s Board of Trustees, though including a number of reforms to make the system more democratic.[xxii]

By the end of the next decade, following the success of early adopters of municipal-funded libraries, “expansion in numbers occurred in a great surge that continued into the twentieth century.”[xxiii] By 1904, there were 64 municipal-funded public libraries in 31 of California’s 58 counties. They boasted a combined collection of nearly 700,000 books.[xxiv] Despite the Monterey Library Association’s early leadership, it would not become a municipal-funded public library until 1906. Prior to that, the Monterey library was operated through fundraising by a ladies’ literary society and open two days per week.[xxv]

Andrew Carnegie Provides Libraries a Home

While new tax revenues provided for the operation of municipal libraries, many of the buildings that served as libraries were generally inadequate in housing their collections, leaving early municipal libraries to make use of surplus space at the local city hall. The Sacramento and Oakland libraries were alone at the time in owning their buildings, handed down from the prior social libraries that provided their foundation. The rise of public libraries coincided with great accumulation of private wealth, and with bond financing still years off, generous benefactors often stepped in to provide needed funding.

Notable 19th century benefactors included Frank Stewart and William Hazelton in Stockton; Alfred and Albert Smiley in Redlands; and the descendants of General Edward Fitzgerald Beale in Bakersfield. Numerous other benefactors continued to build libraries in the early 20th century, including John Q. Packard. As a young merchant in Marysville, he was a member of the city’s noted library association. Decades later, having amassed a mining fortune and retired to Santa Cruz, Packard remembered his hometown, building the historically important library a new home, with added amenities so the new library could also serve as a community center.[xxvi]

The importance of philanthropists such as [Andrew] Carnegie to library building cannot be overestimated. … One cannot but wonder how different California library history might have been without Carnegie-financed library buildings.[xxvii]

These and numerous other wealthy individuals made invaluable contributions to the development of public libraries in California during this period, but they could not compare to the generosity and importance of Andrew Carnegie. “Of the Carnegie philanthropies, libraries were a proportionately small part but are probably the best known. The library building itself became the focus for Carnegie funding, again as an aspect of the concept of self-help.”[xxviii] Initially working through his secretary and providing his personal funds before his foundation took over in 1910, Carnegie gave grants to 122 localities in California (including 4 library districts, 18 counties and 100 municipalities). The locality was required to provide a site for the building and a commitment of operational funding, and in exchange for that received funds to build a library building. Six cities (Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz and Santa Monica) had multiple branches funded by Carnegie. San Francisco received the largest grant of $750,000 (about $15 million in 2019 dollars[xxix]), followed by Los Angeles at $210,000, and Oakland at $50,000 for the central library and $140,000 for four branches). Sacramento received the largest grant for a single building, $100,000. Most grants were for $10,000 (about $270,000 in 2019 dollars).

Andrew Carnegie repeatedly stated that his public library buildings weren’t philanthropy because they ‘only helped those who help themselves.’ … This explanation never satisfied his critics. … Perhaps the motivation for his library philanthropy can be found in The Laborer … commissioned in 1898, eight years after the Allegheny building opened … and dedicated to Colonel Anderson [who opened his home library to working boys]. This allegorical figure of a laborer snatching every free moment to read a book must have resonated with Carnegie. It recalls all his efforts to succeed by whatever means were available to a young immigrant – reading, diligence, a strength of character and mind.[xxx]

As California grew, demand for library services began to outgrow some of the Carnegie buildings that housed them. To expand services, some cities found it necessary to demolish these buildings, either to make room for a larger library in the same location or to repurpose the land after a new building was constructed nearby. Berkeley was the first city to take this step in 1929 and a total of eight Carnegie-funded libraries were closed prior to World War II. As California’s growth accelerated in the post-war years, so too did this trend. Fifty-eight more would close between 1947 and 1969; 29 closed in the 1970s and 13 have closed since, leaving 34 currently operating as public libraries. Fifty-seven of the 108 closed libraries have been demolished. Corona was the last library to meet that fate in 1978. Additionally, the Miller Library in Oakland, which had sat vacant for years, recently burned to the ground.[xxxi] Most of the remaining 50 Carnegie-funded buildings are used for public functions: 21 as museums or similar function; 5 as community centers; 5 as city hall, a police station or city storage space; 4 as research libraries; 8 as private functions, generally office space; and 4 sit vacant and may require significant repair or rehabilitation.[xxxii]

Carnegie had provided basic templates and guidelines that grantees could follow but provided wide discretion in terms of the form of the buildings themselves. His goal was ensuring a functional library that avoided waste.[xxxiii] A lack of both experience and expertise, however, led to the templates often being followed closely. “Little or no architectural precedent existed for the small community library building. Typically, outside of the large cities, few architects designed more than one. However, some architects became Carnegie specialists … in California William Weeks designed twenty-one Carnegie libraries.”[xxxiv] The designs proved ahead of their time, including a focus on communal spaces, welcoming women and children to join men in enjoying the educational and civic benefits they bestowed.[xxxv] Architectural style among California’s Carnegies varied widely, with Greek temple, simplified classical, Mission/Spanish and triumphal arch designs being the most common. Among these styles, the triumphal arch and Mission/Spanish designs are least likely to still be standing.[xxxvi]

The State Library Goes Statewide

In 1903, State Librarian James L. Gillis succeeded in changing the law governing who could borrow books from the State Library. As a result, the State Library could provide library services equally to all Californians no matter where they lived in the state as well as loan out its collection to the public through interlibrary loan programs with public libraries. The same year, Gillis created the Extension Department, which sent out traveling libraries to communities without library facilities. By 1911, 37,288 residents covering every county except San Francisco had borrowed a book from a traveling library.[xxxvii]

An outgrowth of the Traveling Libraries Division, the Extension Department’s purpose was to send its two library organizers throughout the state to encourage the establishment of public libraries, identify suitable buildings that could be converted into a library, and visit those libraries that were already established and assist them with the use of standard library methods. The first two library organizers, Bertha Kumli and Mabel Prentiss, began their work in November 1905 and in one year made 101 visits to 88 towns throughout California to help establish 20 new public libraries. [xxxviii]

The County Library System

By mid-1908, California boasted 114 city libraries but just six supported by counties (Del Norte, Fresno, Modoc, Sacramento, San Francisco and Yolo).[xxxix] “Gillis realized that California was too large a state for one library to give general library service to everyone. … Only county level library service could be both large enough and small enough” to serve even the most rural areas while raising sufficient revenue to function. Gillis secured passage of legislation creating a county library service in 1909, the first in the nation.[xl] In arguing for the proposal, the State Library wrote: “[County library plans] have been found highly satisfactory in bringing to those living in even the remoter districts affected many of the privileges of reading and study enjoyed by city dwellers. The only surprising thing is that so far no state has seen the wisdom of encouraging by proper legislation a much wider adoption of the county library system. California has the distinction of proposing in the following measure known as Assembly Bill No. 196 a plan which will point out clearly to the people of each county how the educational and recreative advantages of a library may best be attained.”[xli]

AB 196 allowed county supervisors to establish a library system of their own volition or for one-quarter of eligible voters in the county to petition their county leaders to establish a system. The law stipulated that existing county supervisors (who would be responsible for funding the library system) should oversee the library system, rather than selecting a separate body and that it would be operated by an independent, professional librarian. Finally, the law empowered the State Librarian to provide general supervision and coordinate continuous quality improvement. [xlii] When questions arose if the law allowed counties to absorb some city libraries as part of a county-wide system, Gillis got the Legislature to pass additional legislation to calm fears from municipal libraries of being absorbed. [xliii],[xliv]

The main purpose of the act is the further welding together of the separate and distinct library units of the state into such a well-articulated and smoothly working system that the book needs of every citizen may be promptly filled, that the rare or required book wherever found may go without delay where it will be of use.[xlv]

Map of California counties, with counties that have free libraries in operation indicated in yellow. All but Del Norte, Shasta, Mendocino, Lake, Yuba, Nevada, El Dorado, Alpine, and Mono are colored in.

Harriet Eddy was hired in 1909 to replace the recently retired Mabel Prentiss and take on the task of organizing county libraries throughout the state. Eddy had previously served as principal of Elk Grove Union High School, where she managed the first Sacramento County branch library. Together with Bertha Kumli, she covered much of the state over the next several years to help fulfill Gillis’ vision that the same State Library services available to California’s urban residents should also be available to those living in rural areas.

The experience of these enterprising women defies all stereotypes of the profession, as illustrated by a 1917 trip Eddy took to visit three towns in Shasta County. Deep, early spring snow ruled out the relative comfort of a stagecoach through the remote passes. At the advice of the county superintendent of schools, Eddy rode the Southern Pacific train to a town on the north side of Mount Lassen. A narrow-gauge logging train brought her further east into the Sierras. She finally transferred to a “dead X” sleigh piled high with freight and newspaper packages, providing her a precarious perch for the ride. As rain turned the snow to slush, Eddy recalled the sleigh driver telling her, “Here’s where we turned over on the last trip.” Mired in heavy mud, Eddy and the others were forced to abandon the sleigh, riding the horses the rest of the trip.[xlvi]

By the time Eddy resigned in 1918, 42 counties had libraries, including the Shasta County Library that was established shortly after her treacherous trip.[xlvii]

1917 and the End of an Era

By 1917, the transformation of libraries in California from a privately supported subscription system to free, publicly supported institutions was complete. So too was the era of rapid growth. With the United States’ entry into World War I, the public’s resources and attention were diverted to world events. Even the State Library and county library system were enlisted in efforts to raise funds for the war effort. California would exceed its fundraising quota.[xlviii] Moreover, with Gillis passing away on July 27, 1917, California’s libraries had lost their greatest champion. “The year thus marked the end of an era in the evolution of the California public library.”[xlix]

The growth of library systems slowed. Just four additional counties started libraries over the following decade[l] and the number of counties that had a library system would not reach 50 until 1947.[li] The foundation for the new statewide library system was largely complete, however. The local libraries were able to continue to grow from just under 1 million volumes in county libraries[lii] in 1917 to over 6 million in 1947 with an additional 7 million volumes in large municipal and district libraries and at least 35 million in total circulation.[liii] This increased to 18 million total volumes with a circulation of 65 million in 1957;[liv] 39 million volumes, 111 million circulation in 1972;[lv] and 84 million items, 211 million circulation in 2018.