By Joan Ruddiman
Fifth and final of a series.
Imagine not having a library in town.
For over 50 years, we’ve had the library on Main Street. After decades of operating in borrowed space, in 1972, the Library Association obtained its permanent home.
The library is the center of community life — busy every hour it is open with people checking out books and videos, working on the computers, finding answers to a host of questions, holding meetings and socializing.
The library is also at the physical center of town. This beautifully restored building, once the Baptist Church, has won awards for excellence in adaptive re-use of an historic building. When we left the story last time, it was 1936 — the depths of the Great Depression. With the death of the librarian, who had the library in her home, Allentown found itself without a library for the first time since 1875. The town could not rally to find the money or the will to save the library.
The library was down, but not completely out. The pharmacist, Larry Byer, offered part of his store (2 Main St. on the corner of Church, home of the current Allentown Pharmacy) as a book station for the Monmouth County Library.
The Monmouth County Library, formed in 1922, was willing to send books for adult readers. The children made do with books at the school library.
When Byer needed space, the library “station” moved to Julia Mount’s dry goods store a few doors down (10 S. Main, Dr. Bauer’s dentist office).
This arrangement lasted a short while, and then the county library established a bookmobile that came to town about once a month. I remember visiting the bookmobile in the mid-1950s before I was in school.
My mother took us to the school parking lot where the bookmobile set up shop to make our selections and return our books. It was jam-packed with books on shelves that covered all but a narrow path down the middle of the van.
As enchanting as that space was to a little preschooler, the bookmobile was a meager library service for a growing town.
The next incarnation of the library’s life began in 1954 when Harry and Jan Williams moved to town where Harry had grown up. Jan had been the children’s librarian at the main branch of the Trenton Public Library on Academy Street.
In Jan’s words, the bookmobile “was not much of anything.” Of course, as a librarian from a city library, she would expect more for the town.
As Storms related in his “History of Allentown” (1965), “library service for the community was limited. That was fact No. 1. At the same time, there were three ex-librarians living in the area. That was fact No. 2. The second should cancel out the first.”
As Jan recalls, she had met Bessie Perlman, a farmer’s wife who lived outside of town and Doris Myers, from Cabbagetown (Route 524 near what is now Keris Tree Farm.
These three intrepid women — all librarians — began building a library. They were unaware they were re-building a library that was founded in 1875.
Their biggest challenge was finding a place for the library. Phil the barber on Church Street “was excited to help, but he had no room.”
Jan says they looked at other places and decided to take up the offer to use “the lefthand side, in the back, of the Grange Hall on Church Street where the driveway to the municipal parking lot is today. The Grange Hall was torn down for the parking lot project.
Along with Martha Spurlock, the wife of the town’s veterinarian, and Beulah Tindall, who still lives on Main Street, they put a collection of books together from donations and from some borrowed from the Monmouth County Library System, which was happy to support their efforts.
They were open for business Saturday mornings — coming in early to set up the makeshift shelves and put out the books. At the end of the morning, they packed everything up and hauled the books to a barn for storage until the next Saturday.
Needless to say, this was stopgap efforts at best. When the Matawan library donated more than 1,000 books it was discarding, the need for space became imperative.
It is interesting to note the re-creation of the library in the mid-1950s was remarkably similar to the first foray into establishing a town library in the 1870s. A group of interested people, women this time around, decided the town needed a library. What followed parallels the early history.
As Jan remembers, Mr. Merwin, the Methodist minister, suggested they formally organize. In April 1954, they held a meeting at the school to establish the Allentown Public Library Association. Jan was elected president.
It is important to note that on this board was a young Berynce Van Kirk, who would become an instrumental part of the library’s story.
Jan remembers, happily, that “the library took off. There was such enthusiasm in town to have a library.”
She recalls how Larry Byer at the pharmacy and Mrs. Mount at the grocery store “talked it up.”
She also offers an interesting analysis of why the library was so embraced.
”This was the 1950s. The Baby Boomers were moving to town,” particularly in the newly developed Lakeview housing tract. “These young families were very eager to support their new town.”
This was the story of my parents’ and our neighbors in the Lakeview development. Unlike the balanced “births” and “deaths” that marked Allentown’s demographics for 250 years, the town was now populated by new people from all over the state and the country.
Like many of that generation, having survived World War II, they now wanted to settle into raising families in a safe place.
Like the folks in the 1870s, who decided a town needed a library, the community, almost 100 years later, worked together to establish a real library in town.
Just as the challenge in the 1870s was finding a location to house the library, the greatest need for this new library was space. And just as the town had done almost a century before, the new library was set up in a house.
Annie Havens who lived at 22 S. Main St. (the southern half of the double brick house, next to the old Messenger building, now Bloomers) offered the use of her front room. The Lions Club agreed to pay the rent.
Nancy Tindall, formerly of Robbinsville, is now back in Allentown where she has deep roots. She remembers this well as her mother, Louise, was a member of the association and helped in the library with Doris Myers, who was the volunteer librarian.
Mrs. Havens soon extended the offer to include a second front room, most likely what was her living room and dining room.
The library at first was open Wednesday nights, but with increased interest, the hours expanded.
At this point, Ellis Hull, the son-in-law of J.W. Naylor, comes into the library’s story.
Ellis, mentioned in the first of this series, moved to Allentown in 1952 when his father-in-law died in order to take over the Allentown Messenger. He also took up the banner for the library that J.W. Naylor had so enthusiastically carried since 1904.
Like Naylor, Ellis was an avid supporter of the library. He kept the library in the public eye through news items in the Allentown Messenger. He also was a long-serving member of the Library Association board.
But is he most fondly remembered for his unflagging confidence in what the library could become.
By the late 1950s, Ellis was a widower, and with Elizabeth married and on her own, he had rented the upstairs of Mrs. Havens’s house. When she died, Ellis bought the property and turned the entire downstairs over for the library’s use. Moreover, he led the charge for raising the funds needed for the renovations necessary for the space to meet the needs of a library.
It was at this point — March 9, 1965 — that the Library Association incorporated as a not-for-profit organization to run a free public library. The association was committing to raising and spending a lot of money on the renovations and the expansion of the library.
It was at this point, too, that Louise Tindall took over as the first paid librarian as the relationship with the Monmouth County Library changed. According to a short history of the Monmouth County Library printed in 1985, the expansion of the Allentown Library motivated the county library to establish official “branch” libraries. Allentown, in 1965, was the first of what would become a dozen branch libraries throughout Monmouth County.
This library was a magical place. The entrance was on the side, up the steps and down the long side porch and into the foyer. The adult books were in the more formal front rooms to the right. The children’s extensive section was to the left, including down some steps into what was the back kitchen. Shelves jammed with books were everywhere in a jumbled maze of fun.
Nancy Tindall remembers helping her mother, Louise Tindall, the librarian, shelve books. She has a particular memory of unpacking and shelving the Oxford English Dictionary — all 26 hefty volumes — the first she had ever seen this impressive work, which, for research libraries, is the backbone of the collection.
This is just one example of the quality of the collection the Library Association was dedicated to building. But at the same time, the library added to the collection of current bestsellers. For a nickel a year, patrons could subscribe to the collection of newest books, many that came from the county and some that were purchased.
Nancy recalls Mr. Merwin, the Methodist minister, would stop in periodically to check on these titles to be sure they were appropriate for the morals of Allentown’s readers.
The 1960s was a great time for the library. The space was lovely after extensive renovations when Ellis turned over the entire first floor.
Just as it had been in the 1870s, the library was supported by the community, which enabled it to grow to serve the needs of an expanding population.
The borough in 1955 put the library in the town budget. Nancy recalls her mother’s least favorite part of her job as librarian was going to council every year to make a report and ask for the library to be included in the budget.
In 1960, Upper Freehold Township began contributing. The Lions Club was were staunch supporters with donations from fundraisers as well as the Jaycees, the UVS, the churches, PTA and donations from citizens.
Hours were increased as Berynce Van Kirk became Louise Tindall’s assistant. When Louise retired, Berynce seamlessly stepped in as the head librarian.
Storms in his “History of Allentown” (1965) ends his chapter on the history of library with the observation “Allentown residents considered the library association a fine example of what can happen to an intrinsically sound idea when the citizens of a community get behind it. ‘It does indeed belong to the people,’ one declared, ‘because the people cooperated in its birth and growth.’”
We know, from our perspective in 2015, that the library’s story was not finished. The best, truly, was to come.
It is an amazing story of how the town got a permanent library space after a century of moving throughout Allentown.
But how did the library get a steeple?
Whatever possessed the good people of town and the Allentown Library Association to buy the burned-out Baptist Church?
For the rest of the story and for photos and elaborated stories of the brief history shared in this series, all are invited to attend the celebration of the library’s 50th anniversary of its incorporation to be held at the library Sunday, March 8, from 2 to 4 p.m.
The presentation will include film of the library before the renovation in the 1990s and a discussion with some of the original members, who were the visionaries, who incorporated the association and moved to take the extraordinary risk of buying a property as a permanent home for the Allentown Public Library.
Joan Ruddiman is a lifelong fan of the Allentown Public Library.
