Newark Library Association (Librariana A)

Chartered in 1847, the Newark Library Association was a private organization, a subscription library, which required members to purchase shares of stock in order to utilize the collections. It was housed in “Library Hall” on West Market Street until 1887 when a referendum was passed which approved the founding of a free public library. The new Free Public Library acquired the holdings of the Newark Library Association, which contained approximately 10,000 books, and it operated out of Library Hall on West Market Street until the new public library building on Washington Street was completed in 1902.

Julia Sabine, one of the librarians in the Art & Music Department, wrote her dissertation for the University of Chicago on “The Antecedents of the Newark Public Library” in 1946. Much of it relates to the history of the Newark Library Association. A copy of this dissertation is including in Librariana I: History.