TENAFL, N.J.—With a modest collection of books to their credit and some space set aside on the third floor of the local grammar school, the Tenafly Library got started 110 years ago this week.
In those days, the library was not yet a taxpayer-funded institution. Rather, anyone could pay $1 in dues annually to borrow from what was then a collection of just 350 books. The opening marked the culmination of efforts that began in 1895, when the Tenafly Library Society had formed to promote learning in the study of literature and art.
The library’s initial space, which it occupied for only two years, was in a small unused room on the third floor of the Browning School at West Clinton Avenue and Tenafly Road (pictured above). The first librarian was Mrs. Caroline “Callie” York. Born in Rhode Island in 1854, she spent her early life there before coming to Tenafly around the 1880s. In 1910 she was hired as the librarian for $40 per year.
Circulation numbers are not available for that first year, but records show the circulation in 1911 was 4,972. Tenafly’s population at the time was 2,756. A 1911 report from the New Jersey Library Bulletin, a trade publication published in Trenton, reads as follows: “The Tenafly library, started in February 1910, has had a steady growth in circulation. The borrowers now number 380, and the library owns nearly a thousand volumes, besides circulating those of the school library, numbering 2,000. The officers of the Association maintaining the library have incorporated recently, in order to enable them to purchase a piece of ground.”
That “piece of ground” was an empty lot on the south side of Washington Street, near Tenafly Road. To serve as the library building, the association bought—at a cost of $400—a small wooden structure at the corner of Washington Street and West Railroad Avenue that had previously been a post office. They moved the building to its new lot, where it served as the library’s home for the next 50 years.
The library moved into its current space in the municipal center in 1963, at which time the existing location (the former post office) was torn down.
