Let’s remember when Issaquah’s library opened, on this day in 1946 (February 16)
The first official library opened on this day in 1946. As HistoryLink tells it:
The Issaquah Library traces its beginnings to February 1908, when a reading room opened in the back of Enos Guss’s barbershop on Front Street. The reading room eventually faded away, and Issaquah’s first “real” library, offering slightly more than 1,500 books, opened in the town hall in February 1946. Bigger and better libraries followed in 1963 and 1983, and in 1990 Issaquah voters approved annexing the library to the King County Library System (KCLS). In 2001, KCLS opened the current Issaquah Library in a pleasant, roomy new building at 10 W Sunset in Issaquah.
It was a big hit right out of the gate. Again, quoting HistoryLink:
In its first few weeks the library registered nearly 500 borrowers, most of them children, and that summer began offering a series of story hours for the town’s youth. But the library also had plenty for adults — various articles in the Issaquah Press reported that a variety of gardening books were offered to women, while books that it described as geared toward men were also offered, many of them related to construction and repair. There was also at least one thought-provoking title available: Modern Man Is Obsolete, a recently published book by Norman Cousins discussing the ramifications of the new Atomic Age. The paper added that the library provided the “best in ‘escape’ reading” (“New Library …”), such as detective stories and romance. In addition to 1,549 books, the library provided 11 magazines (Consumer’s Research was a favorite) and two sets of encyclopedias, one for adults and one for children.
A February 1947 article in the Press proudly boasted of the library’s success in its first year. The library reported that it had increased its book count to 2,410, a more than 50 percent increase. More than 17,000 books had been borrowed in the preceding year by the library’s 759 registered borrowers (as of the end of 1946), and nearly two thirds of these books were “juvenile titles” (“Local Library …”). That made sense, since more than 60 percent of the library’s members were children. Additionally, the library kept a rotating collection of books on site to meet the changing needs of the community; for example, the Press reported that 100 books of interest to young people were being sent from county library headquarters to the Issaquah Library that week in preparation for visits from eight local high school English classes.
For further reading:
