Silas Bronson Library
The Silas Bronson Library is a public library service in Waterbury, Connecticut. It was named after Silas Bronson, a New York City-based merchant and philanthropist who was born in the Waterbury area. Established in 1868 through Bronson's $200,000 bequest, it became the successor to various earlier outlets dating as far back as the end of the 18th century. The service expanded to other neighborhoods, starting in 1907 and after World War II. Its current Main Branch, which opened in 1968, supplanted two previous buildings from 1870 and 1894.
History
Predecessors
Before the establishment of the Silas Bronson service, various library facilities served the area currently representing Waterbury, Connecticut. The earliest-known, the Union Library, was first recorded in 1797 and operated for at least a decade. Another outlet, Minor's, surfaced in the 1810s but no longer exists. Both of them, plus a third one in what is now Middlebury dating back to the early 1800s decade, were followed by the Waterbury Library in 1822; it became a division of the local Young Men's Institute by 1852.Founding and early years
The Silas Bronson Library was named after Silas Bronson, a New York City-based merchant and philanthropist born in 1788 in Waterbury's West Farms area. Although Bronson seldom revisited Connecticut or his relatives there, he bequeathed $200,000 towards the establishment of a new public library in Waterbury upon his 1867 death. This gift was allegedly prompted under the imploration of his longtime associate Lucien S. Bronson, and may have been anticipated by John Jacob Astor's $400,000 grant for the New York Public Library in 1848. News of the library funds surprised many of the town's residents, many of whom never knew Bronson.In mid-1868, Waterbury officials approved the funds for the new library; $12,000 of the original bequest was taxed by the town the following March 8. It opened on April 1, 1870, with William Isaac Fletcher as its first librarian and a collection of 11,096 volumes, at a specially purchased site on Leavenworth Street and Center Square. Within its first two months of operation, 1,593 people registered as patrons; to curb the resulting overcrowding, a women's reading room was launched on the second floor. To prevent soiling by patrons, books were kept in closed shelves, and hands were washed before handling them. Fletcher ended his tenure on September 1, 1872 when he was assigned to Lawrence, Massachusetts, and was succeeded by Homer Franklin Bassett.
Unlike its private-collection forebears, the Bronson Library was a public service from the beginning. During its early years, it also facilitated the preservation of rare and costly books. "Later," newspaper editor William J. Pape would write in 1918, "the pressure of democratic tendencies forced it into line with a movement directed by the American Library Association and having for its aim 'The best books for the largest number at the least cost.' To this library movement so called is due the present system of free libraries supported by the people and appealing to them under the democratic title of 'People's Universities.'"
In 1878, Bronson began discussing their first relocation, and was preparing to purchase a land lot on West Main Street where operations could continue. Lack of a suitable location, along with opposition over the facility's proposed sites, put their plans on hold for 15 years. In late December 1891, a site on Grand Street was chosen under Mayor Charles R. Baldwin's supervision. The library's new Grand Street building, designed by Cady, Berg & See of New York City, was constructed on a site of for $63,500 between June 1893 and August 1894 at the city's former burial grounds, whose remains were removed to make way for it. Bronson's collection contained more than 50,000 volumes by the time it moved; in 1896, the facility was said to be the biggest in the state outside Yale University. It inaugurated a children's section in 1898, and in 1902, allowed public access to its shelf stacks for the first time and relaxed its "stringent" borrowing rules, aiding its first wave of popularity. It was temporarily closed in 1902 for two months due to a smallpox epidemic, and again in 1918 for three weeks during the Spanish flu.
Expansion
The Bronson library launched its first branch on March 26, 1907 in the Waterville neighborhood, on the upper floor of a drugstore building. Encouraged by its success, the service opened more locations over the next several years: South Waterbury in May 1908; Brooklyn on October 23, 1909; and Rose Hill on October 3, 1913. Of these branches, South Waterbury closed after only four years. Bronson became only the third public library in the United States with a business-oriented section when the Main Branch's Industrial Department opened in November 1917. By the late 1910s, twenty were employed at the Grand Street facility, up from seven a few years prior.During the late 1920s, Lindsay Brown called on the service to open more branches. Progress resumed two decades later as new outlets in the East End, North End, and Bunker Hill areas arrived in the wake of Waterbury's population increase during World War II, alongside community demand. The East End facility was converted from a former store, while the one in Bunker Hill was constructed for $40,000. The Main Branch introduced an audio-record section in early 1943, and microfilm services in 1951. As of 2021, only the Bunker Hill branch remains in operation.
Later years
Concerns over diminishing capacity at Bronson's old Grand Street base had been raised as early as 1922, when its then-librarian Helen Sperry stated:Several years later, Sperry's successor Brown felt that Waterbury deserved a replacement facility within a decade, a vision that would only take form starting in 1963. Designed by local architect Joseph Stein, the new Bronson building cost $1.4 million, measured in area, and was built in two phases "for operational and financial reasons": The Main Reading Room and front lobby opened in October 1963, replacing the "four-story bookstack" on the same site, while the East Wing was completed in June 1968 and opened that September 29.
The adult division transitioned to the service's new home in 1964 during construction. Although the children's division remained at the old facility for the time being, Emelyn Barrett Trimble noted that young patrons attended the new one more than grown-ups, a harbinger of the "public enthusiasm" surrounding the replacement and its aesthetic.
The Bronson service introduced a "Books-by-Mail" program in 1975, and by 2001–2003, what it promoted as "the most advanced technology center at a public library in Connecticut", supported by a $2.125 million grant from the Gates Foundation. In the late 2010s, a "teen zone" and computer classroom were introduced at the Main Branch. In 2019, the Library held its first fundraiser, and sought a new organization logo and website revamp via volunteers from Catchafire. On April 1, 2020, it celebrated its 150th anniversary with a virtual facility tour amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Entertainment
In 1997, the Library launched the Waterbury Hall of Fame at the Brass Mill Center, with Rosalind Russell, Jimmy Piersall, and Lucia Chase as some of its first inductees. A 2002 album, The Jazz Trio Alive with Glenda Davenport, was recorded at the premises.Incidents and reputation
In October 2017, a Republican-American reporter wrote in light of the Library's then-recent crises, "Silas Bronson is a gem, but in recent years, it seemingly has been unable to avoid negative publicity." They also cited State Governor Dannel Malloy's 2014 denouncement of the facility as "one of the worst" he encountered during his tenure.Embezzlement scandal
Over a nine-year period starting in 2005, a Library clerk of 25 years' tenure embezzled over $330,000 in service funds; in 2014, she quit her job soon after her arrest and exposure. The following October, the service received a $238,000 reimbursurement check from Great American Insurance.Other incidents
In late 2006, the Bronson Library discarded 20,000 mold-infested items from their collection, pending cleanup and rehabilitation of the basement where they were stored and, thanks to ventilation issues, eventually contaminated. The affected publications, issued between the 19th century and the 1970s, were seldom circulated; some were already available in electronic form. A few that were unique to the facility "help illustrate Waterbury's industrial history."During Memorial Day weekend the following year, the Main Branch's air-conditioning system was broken into for its copper, as part of a wave of metal thefts in the state; the copper piping was soon restored. In October 2019, a man placed a phone call to the Library demanding a "First Amendment audit", threatening to bring bodybuilders who would enact citizens' arrest as well as an attorney at the site.