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The New York Society Library: A Comparison

Arnold Whitridge

From the book Redwood Papers: A Bicentennial Collection.

Machiavelli had the right idea about libraries. Whenever he planned to spend the evening in his own library he invariably put on his best clothes since, as he said, he was going to consort with the best company. Today anyone visiting the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Redwood Library of Newport, the Charleston Library Society, or the New York Society Library, would be well advised for more reasons than one to follow Machiavelli's example. These four libraries are all older than the United States government. Supported by generous bequests, and nurtured by careful stewardship, these libraries have been growing in wisdom and stature for considerably more than two hundred years. As such they would seem to be entitled to our respect as well as to our affection.

The oldest of them, the Library Company of Philadelphia, was founded in 1731; the youngest, the New York Society Library, in 1754. Many of our college libraries are older than these but they were not like them subscription libraries open to the public. The first subscription library, not connected with any church, owes its existence to the practical mind of Benjamin Franklin. He had organized a little society of intellectuals in Philadelphia, known as the Junto, and in 1730 he persuaded the members to pool their private libraries into a single collection. When the collection turned out to be disappointingly small Franklin, not a man easily discouraged, launched his "first project of a public nature", a subscription library which he called the Library Company of Philadelphia. Thomas Penn, an energetic gentleman who ruled the Penn family from London, congratulated the Library Company on being the first institution that "encouraged Knowledge and Learning" in the Province of Pennsylvania. Books were not the only attraction. The Library Company housed specimens of natural history and scientific apparatus as well. There were stuffed snakes, a dead pelican, a collection of fossils, an air pump described as 'costly', and an 'electric machine.'

Subscription libraries like the Library Company of Philadelphia were run by fees. The proprietary library like the New York Society Library, which boasted a wealthier clientele, operated on a joint-stock principle with members buying shares in the Library. The motive behind them was the same. They were both open to the public, but they were not 'free'. Today there is some confusion about the word 'public'. It is sometimes, but not always, thought of as being synonymous with 'free'. Public schools and public libraries are 'free', but public transportation, as we all know to our cost, is not. In the 18th century there was no such confusion. Libraries were open to the public, and the public paid for the privilege of using them.

The New York Society Library, twenty-three years younger than the Library Company of Philadelphia, was started 'at an evening convention of a few friends' with the idea of 'promoting a spirit of enquiry among the people.' If there was no Franklin among the few private friends, the six founders of the New York Society Library were men of a good deal more importance in their community than the members of the Junto. They all belonged to an association called the Whig Club, a center of opposition to the royalist or government party. There was nothing small about their ideas. At their first meeting they talked of an incorporation by royal charter, and the erection of an edifice at some future day for a Museum and an Observatory as well as library. Being men of some distinction themselves they had ready access to the lieutenant governor and the council, nearly all of whom according to the records did not hesitate to sign the subscription lists presented to them.

One of the factors that may well have influenced the more well-to-do citizens of New York is their ready support of a city library was that some of them already been enlisted in another philanthropic venture, the founding of a seat of higher learning in New York, to be known as King's College. Might not the contemplated library serve the students of King's College as well as the general public? So it came about that New York's first college and New York's oldest library were born within a few months of each other in the year 1751. The little college which once graduated but two students, and had to turn to 'the commodious Society Library' for books, is now the vast university whose own splended library is one of the greatest collections of the western world.

The six young men who were sanguine enough to think that New York with a population of 12,000, though smaller and less important than either Boston or Philadelphia, was still entitled to a library of its own, were men of affairs rather than scholars. They included three members of the Livingston family, Philip primarily a business man but an ardent patriot and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, William his lawyer brother who represented New Jersey in all three Continental Congresses and was to become the first governor of New Jersey under independence, and Robert R. Livingston a cousin who was reputed to be the wealthiest landowner in New York. As an associate justice of the supreme court, which he was for the last twelve years of his life, Robert was a more cautious supporter of independence than either of his cousins. He died in 1775, perhaps fortunately, before it was necessary to declare for one side or the other.

Of the other three founders William Alexander better known as Lord Stirling, though not a man of any great ability, was destined to become one of Washington's wheelhorses, loyal, hard-working and slow-witted. It is a family tradition that his cultivated mother, Mistress Polly Sprat Alexander, in her strong public spirit and desire for improvement, had suggested the library idea to her son and his friends. William Smith and John Morin Scott were very different from Lord Stirling and much abler. For years a law partner of William Livingston and associated with the Livingston clan in local politics Smith ended by breaking with them all on the issue of independence. They were patriots and he was a loyalist. While "all his sympathies were with the individual rebel none were with the rebellion that severed the new from old England." After the Revolution he continued allegiance to the crown in Canada, where an honorable career was in store for him as chief justice. In one way Smith is the most important of the founders as he is the author of a still readable 'History of the Late Province of New York' from which we get most of our information about the early days of the Library.

At the other end of the spectrum from William Smith was John Morin Scott, one of the founders of the famous 'Sons of Liberty'. He was with Washington all through the early days of the warthey appear to have been close friends and he is said to have been one of the few of Washington's officers who distinguished himself at the battle of Long Island. At the same time he kept up his interest in the Society Library and in King's College of which he was a trustee.

Such were the men who met together one evening early in March, 1754, and founded the Society Library. Within little more than a month they had created an organization, chosen a board of Trustees and, still more to the point, raised by private subscription a sum substantial enough to prove that the Library was a going concern. Its first notice which appeared in the 'New York Mercury', April 8th, read as follows:

A Subscription is now on Foot, and carried on with great Spirit, to raise money for erecting and maintaining a publick Library in this City; and we hear that not less then 70 Gentlemen have already subscribed Five pounds Principal, and Ten Shillings per annum, for that Purpose. We make no doubt but a Scheme of this Nature, so well calculated for promoting Literature, will meet with due Encouragement from all who wish the happiness of the coming Generation.

The name 'Society Library' occasionally creates difficulties today of which the founders never dreamed. It is assumed the the institution was so called because it was meant to be the library of New York Society. Of course in the 18th century 'society' was a perfectly straightforward word with no ugly connotation of caste about it. It meant merely a company, a voluntary association of people of similar tastes. It would never have occurred to any of the founders, all of them liberal-minded men, that anyone should be exluded on account of birth.

That the Library has never been bound by social convention is indicated by the inclusion of a woman's name in the original parchment charter, granted by King George III in 1772. The names of the fifty-nine stockholders (then called subscribers) are incorporated in the charter, the last one being "Anne Waddell, widow", a lady of unusual ability and force of character who carried on the large shipping interests of her husband, one of the original supporters of the Library. It was said that Mrs. Waddell attended and cast her vote at all the meetings of the shareholders, a most unusual proceeding for a woman in colonial days. Beginning with Anne Waddell the Society Library has always welcomed women to enrollment as shareholders with unrestricted access to the shelves. Though this may sound so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning, the fact is that as late as 1856 the Boston Athenaeum considered it "undesirable that a modest young woman should have anything to do with the corrupter portions of polite literature." A considerable portion of a general library should be to her, according to the librarian of the Athenaeum "a sealed book." He also remarked that admitting women to the shelves "would occasion frequent embarrassment to modest men."

The Trustees started ordering books from London as soon as they were appointed and on October 14, 1754, they had the satisfaction of reading in the New York Mercury that Captain Miller, "42 days out from London", had arrived safely with a consignment for the Trustees of the New York Society Library of some 700 volumes. A printed catalogue of the collection was advertised in the 'Mercury' on October 21st at the price of "Four Coppers", but unfortunately no copy of this first catalogue has survived. For the time being the lately imported books were placed 'by leave of the Corporation in their Library Room in the City Hall.' The public was notified that the books would be available on Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 to 12 a.m. A few weeks later the Trustees changed their minds. Two hours twice a week was considered too much. Accordingly it was decided that during the winter season the Library would be open only on Tuesdays for one hour.

Shortly after the arrival of the books a Mr. Benjamin Hildreth was appointed to the office of 'Library Keeper.' He was to be paid six pounds annually out of the yearly subscriptions 'for his trouble and Care while in that Office.' This first Librarian of the Society Library had been registered a freeman in January, 1752. It was also noted that he was by profession a Distiller. Even before the books had arrived or the Librarian been appointed the Trustees drew up their first set of rules. The subscribers were entitled to one book per month. Non-subscribers were charged, curiously enough, according to the size of the book. Folios cost a shilling a day. They could be 'detained' one month but 'persons living without the city limits might detain a volume double the ordinary time with the privilege of renewal unless called for.' Quartos could be had for ninepence, octavos for sixpence, and duodecimos for threepence. They too could be detained at the same rate.

The Library did not acquire a home of its own until 1793 by which time, after looking for two years, a "suitable Lott was found opposite the new Dutch Church on Nassau Street." The Trustees held their first meeting in the new Library Hall on April 25, 1795. The building was "finished in a square form instead of an oval as formerly proposed." It cost 883 pounds, three shillings and sevenpence halfpenny (a little over $2200.) Until then the Trustees were in the habit of meeting at one or another of the various public houses. On March 9, 1764, for instance, we read that the Trustees assembled at the house of Mr. Samuel Francis, in other words Fraunces Tavern, soon to become famous as the scene of Washington's 'Farewell' to his officers.

The new Library Hall was ready for business on June 2, 1795, on which date the Librarian notified the Board that the removal of the books, some four thousand of them, from City Hall to the new quarters had been duly completed at a cost of five pounds. The Librarian was complimented by the Board and his salary was raised to $250 a year. At the same time he was requested to submit a plan "for arranging the books scientifically." During the seven years of the Revolution the Library had been looted indiscriminately by both sides. British soldiers were in the habit of carrying off books in their knapsacks and bartering them for grog. Nor do the patriots appear to have behaved any better. It is said that a whole edition of the Rev. Gilbert Tennant's sermon, 'Defensive War', printed by Franklin, "was utilized by revolted colonists for the manufacture of musket cartridges to aid in driving King George's Hessian mercenaries off the soil, and to establish American liberty in place of foreign tyranny." There was indeed a need for scientific cataloguing and for a good deal else besides. Some of the looted books were ultimately returned but the Library collection built up so lovingly over twenty years hovered for some time between life and death.

No Trustees' meetings are recorded between 1774 and 1788 but that does not mean that no conferences took place. Some of the Trustees must have assembled at least once during these fourteen years for on Feb. 16, 1784, 'The New York Packet' carried a notice about returning books belonging to the Society Library to Mr. Keteltas, a trustee, whose place of business was on Wall Street. From then on we hear a good deal about the resilience of the Library. Along with schools, churches and private dwellings it was rising "phoenix-like out of its parents' ashes and rapidly soaring far beyond the flight of former times." The rapid recovery of the Library and its subsequent wellbeing is proved not only by the decision of the Trustees to build their own 'Library Hall' but also by the publication of the 'handsome subscription list,' which appeared in 1791, with such names in it as Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, George Clinton, the Governor of the state, and John Jay the chief justice. Ten members of the Livingston family held shares in the Library along with General Steuben, Washington's drill master, and Rufus King, one of the state's first two senators, who were Trustees as well as shareholders. There was no club in New York that offered such interesting society as was to be found in the Society Library Hall on Nassau Street.

By 1838 the Trustees realized that the Library had outgrown its pleasant quarters on Nassau Street "overlooking the garden of Mr. Winter with its fine grapery and overhanging fruit trees." The new home on Broadway and Leonard Street was less rustic but more imposing. Ruggles' 'Picture of New York in 1846' speaks of it as "a conspicuous and beautiful edifice of the Ionic order, of brown freestone," and declares its apartments "unsurpassed for architectural beauty by any in the United states." The great feature of the Library's new home was its lecture room where one heard Poe and Emerson, Fanny Kemble (who cancelled after the first readings because of the acoustics), Signor Blitz the ventriloquist, the American Daguerre Association, the Swiss bell-ringers and countless other entertainers. In 1856 the Library moved once again, this time to University Place where it remained for 80 years before moving to its present site on 79th Street.

One of the most interesting volumes in the Library is the Visitors' Book which was kept from 1840 to 1855, the period of the second building, the scene of the Library's greatest social activity. According to Mrs. Marion King whose charming recollections of the Library, 'Books and People' published in 1954 to commemorate the 200th anniversary, this was the golden age. Being 'the' Library in those days, as Mrs. King truly points out, it was one of the sights for visitors to the city. Young Prince Bonaparte, soon to become Napoleon III, Mr. Charles Dickens, Mr. Thackeray, Mr. James Fenimore Cooper, the Hon. Daniel Webster, and Professor Longfellow of Harvard; were all registered as guests of the Library. Even more interesting perhaps than this list of names is to see in the charging ledger what books these distinguished men borrowed. Anyone who has ever been spellbound by 'Moby Dick' can hardly be unmoved when he finds that Melville took out Bougainville's 'Voyage Around the World' and Scoresby's 'Arctic Regions and North Whale Fishery' in the two years, (1848-1850), before 'Moby Dick' was published.

Through the Library ledger we can also find out what Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, John Adams and John Jay were reading, and many others as well. Most intriguing of all is an entry on October 5, 1789: 'Law of Nations, Common Debates, vol. 12, the President.' Did Washington himself visit the Library or did he send someone to get the book for him? Such details may be of importance only to prospective biographers, but to them they are very important indeed.

This is the kind of information that is not to be found in the giant university libraries. The resources of the four pre-Revolutionary subscription libraries do not compare with theirs, but as we hurry on into the third century we are grateful to Newport booklovers for reminding us that the four senior citizens among libraries have deserved well of the Republic. They have certainly not rejected their past but neither have they been held captive by it. Today all libraries are having to come to terms with machines and computer systems, with films and phonograph records. Though they may look back with nostalgia to the days when libraries dealt only with books and papyri they are not discouraged, for their principles and their purpose remain the same. They are still striving by blending the past, the present and the future to make ideas accessible to mankind. That surely is the very stuff of civilization.