The children's room: the library as a place of fun

AN ANCHOR ENTRY · 1907 TO 1969 AND AFTER · THE INSTITUTION BELONGS TO THE LIBRARY RECORD

The library's buildings, boards, and mergers belong to the library record of this history. What belongs here is narrower and, for a Mishawaka childhood, not small: the library was one of the city's few indoor pleasures that asked nothing but a card, and its children's service has a dated course.

Mishawaka's public library service was implemented in 1907 — revived after an earlier membership library's dissolution in 1900 — in a small room on the second floor of City Hall holding about a thousand books. The Eberhart family gave the land for a proper building; construction began in September 1915, and the Carnegie Library opened on 5 May 1916 at First and Hill streets. (The Eberhart name meets this record twice in one generation: the family that gave the library its ground is the family whose gift, seven years earlier, had made Camp Eberhart permanent — the camp entry carries that story whole.) The children's service has its own dated expansion: in 1938 the Carnegie building was enlarged to give the children's division room of its own, and in the library's published history the weekly story times of that children's division "became a treasure for local kids" — the story hour standing in the record as the children's room's characteristic pleasure, a scheduled fun with a librarian for its performer. The Carnegie served the city's children for more than fifty years. In July 1969 the collection moved — the transfer began on Monday, 14 July 1969, book carts rolling one block at a time — to the new library at 209 Lincolnway East, where the children's service continued in larger rooms. The closing line is a continuity: the children's service runs today as the youth services of the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, storytimes at the downtown library and the branches — the 1938 children's division's direct descendant, in the third building of its line.

Sources:

1. Alec Evans, "Pages in Transit: How Mishawaka Moved Its Library and Preserved Its History," South Bend News-Times, 9 April 2025 — the 1907 service and the City Hall room; the Eberhart family's gift of land; construction from September 1915; the Carnegie opening, 5 May 1916; the 1938 expansion for the children's division and its weekly story times; the move of 14 July 1969 to 209 Lincolnway East.
2. Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library — the present youth services and storytimes; closing-line evidence, read November 2026.