Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World

The Spencer Public Library was founded in 1883 in Mrs. H. C. Crary’s parlor. In 1890, the library moved to a small frame building on Grand Avenue. In 1902, Andrew Carnegie granted the town $10,000 for a new library. Carnegie was a product of the industrial revolution that had turned a nation of farmers into factory workers, oilmen, and iron smelters. He was a ruthless corporate capitalist who built his United States Steel into the nation’s most successful business. He was also a Baptist, and by 1902 he was deep into the pursuit of giving away his money to worthwhile causes. One cause was providing grants to small towns for libraries. For a town like Spencer, a Carnegie library was a sign you had made it not exactly to the top, but farther than Hartley and Everly.

The Spencer Public Library opened on March 6, 1905, on East Third Street, half a block off Grand Avenue. It was typical of Carnegie libraries, since Carnegie had mandated a classical style and symmetry of design. There were three stained-glass windows in the entrance hall, two with flowers and one with the word library. The librarian perched behind a large central desk, surrounded by drawers of cards. The side rooms were small and cloistered, with bookshelves to the ceiling. In an era when public buildings were segregated by sex, men and women were free to enter any room. Carnegie libraries were also among the first to let patrons choose books off the shelves instead of making requests to the librarian.

Some historians describe Carnegie libraries as plain, but that is true only in comparison to the elaborate central libraries of cities like New York and Chicago, which had carved friezes, ornately painted ceilings, and crystal chandeliers. Compared to the parlor of a local woman’s home or a storefront on Grand Avenue, the Spencer Carnegie library was impossibly ornate. The ceiling was high, the windows enormous. The half-underground bottom floor held the children’s library, an innovation at a time when children were often kept locked away in their homes. Children could sit and read on a circular bench, while above them a window looked out at ground level on a flat grass lawn. The floorboards throughout the building were dark wood, highly polished and very wide. They creaked when you walked, and often that creaking was the only sound you could hear. The Carnegie was a library where books were seen, not heard. It was a museum. It was as quiet as a church. Or a monastery. It was a shrine to learning, and in 1902 learning meant books.

When many people think of a library, they think of a Carnegie library. These are the libraries of our childhood. The quiet. The high ceilings. The central library desk, complete with matronly librarian (at least in our memories). These libraries seemed designed to make children believe you could get lost in them, and nobody could ever find you, and it would be the most wonderful thing.

By the time I was hired in 1982, the old Carnegie library was gone. It had been beautiful but small. Too small for a growing town. The land deed specified the town must use it for a library or return it to the owner, so in 1971 the town tore down the old Carnegie building to build a bigger, more modern, more efficient library, one without squeaky floorboards, dim lighting, imposingly high bookshelves, and rooms to get lost in.

It was a disaster.

Spencer is built in a traditional style. The retail buildings are brick, the houses along Third Street two- and three-story frame boardinghouses. The new library was concrete. One story tall, it hunched on the corner like a bunker. Its original wide lawn was gone, replaced by two tiny gardens. Too shadowed to grow much, they were soon filled in with rocks. The glass front doors were set back from the street, but the entryway was enclosed and unwelcoming. The east wall, which faced the town middle school, was solid concrete. Grace Renzig lobbied herself onto the library board in the late 1970s with the goal of having vines planted along the east wall. She got her vines a few years later, but she ended up staying on the board for almost twenty years.

The new Spencer Public Library was modern, but with a brutish efficiency. And it was flat-out cold. A glass wall faced north, with a lovely view of the alley. In the winter, you couldn’t keep the back of the library warm. The floor plan was open, leaving no space for storage. There was no designated staff area. There were only five electric outlets. The furniture, made by local craftsmen, was beautiful but impractical. The tables had prominent support bars so you couldn’t pull up additional chairs, and they were solid oak with black laminate tops, so they were too heavy to move. The carpet was orange, a Halloween nightmare.