The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1873 – 1992 · at branch-bearing size
The system North Liberty joined in 1986 was founded by a school board: a voluntary reading room of 1873, a Board of Education resolution of 1888, and an opening in 1889 on the fourth floor of an opera house. The line is the system's own history page, read whole. In 1873, "a public reading room, full of donated books, opened on Michigan Street, thanks to the South Bend Library and Reading Room Association" — voluntary, not tax-supported. In 1888 "the South Bend Board of Education passed a resolution providing for the establishment of a public library," and in 1889 the South Bend Public Library "opened to the public on the fourth floor of the Oliver Opera House," with Evelyn Humphreys appointed its first head librarian. The establishment line is therefore 1888/1889, founded by the school board; 1873 is the reading room that preceded it, and the two dates are not merged here. (A secondary summary renders the first librarian "Evelyn Humphries"; the system's own spelling, Humphreys, governs, and the variant prints so it is not inherited.) In 1896 the Board of Education bought land downtown and built at 304 South Main Street a building its age called "The Castle" — the history page's own heading — and "South Bend's Pride." The Castle was demolished in 1958 for a new building; the new Main was named the Betty Ruth Spiro Memorial Library in 1960; and the present Main Library was dedicated in 1992 "in its original location on 304 S. Main Street," renovated since, with its grand reopening on 14 November 2021 and its Community Learning Center opened 10 January 2022. The system went fine-free in January 2022. This course prints at the size it bears on North Liberty: it is the institution the town's branch belongs to, told from the institution's own record — and its whole telling, at full size, belongs to South Bend's build.