The Library Where the Founding Fathers Read

Edwin Wolf 2nd, bearded 78-year-old librarian emeritus of the oldest public library in America, pulled a small book with a faded yellow cover off a stack and opened it.

In the smooth, round handwriting of a teen-ager at the top of the title page of “Logic; Or, The Art Of Thinking” a 16-year-old had written his name--”B. Franklin.”

In 1731 when Franklin was 25, he launched the first public library in this country, The Library Company of Philadelphia, that continues operating to this day. The library’s first location was in a home on Pewter Platter Alley.

Now 250 years old, The Library Company of Philadelphia has one of the largest collections of 17th and 18th-Century books in the U.S. Of the 450,000 books, 160,000 manuscripts, 50,000 prints and photographs, half were published in the 1700s and first half of the 1800s.

Over the years, Franklin’s library served as the library for the Continental Congress, for the 55 delegates who wrote the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 and for the nation’s first Congress because it provided most of the accumulated wisdom published up to that time. The Library Company was then in Carpenter’s Hall across from Independence Hall.

When the Revolution began, The Library Company had more than 5,000 volumes, books still on the shelves today in its latest quarters, an eight-story modern building at 1314 Locust Street in the heart of Philadelphia.

“Several hundred books and pamphlets on our shelves belonged to Franklin,” noted Wolf, The Library Company’s librarian from 1952 to 1984, who brought the historic institution out of bankruptcy into a vigorous new era.

The Library Company was the largest public library in America from Franklin’s time through the mid-19th Century.

When Franklin was 21 in 1727 he organized Junto, a discussion group also known as the Leather Apron Club whose members met to debate politics and philosophy and to exchange knowledge.

Four years later when Franklin wrote in his autobiography, he began with these words “my first project of a public nature, a subscription library.” Fifty members of Junto pooled their resources to launch the library and ordered a well-rounded collection of books from London. There were no bookstores in Philadelphia then.

Their first shipment from England was 141 volumes including Palladio’s “Architecture,” Bailey’s “Dictionarium,” Boerhaave’s “Chemistry,” Gordon’s “Geography,” Drake’s “Anatomy,” Ellis’ “Practical Farmer,” Defoe’s “Complete English Tradesman,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Pope’s “Homer,” Dryden’s “Virgil,” Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Rapin-Thoyras’ “History of England.”

A letter about the library appeared in a copy of Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette published in the spring of 1740. The writer commented:

“I am but a poor ordinary Mechanick of this city, obligated to work hard for the maintenance of myself, my wife and several small children. When my daily labour is over, instead of going to the Alehouse, I amuse myself with the books of The Library Company.”

Forty years after Franklin founded the nation’s first public library, he wrote: “This was the mother of all American subscription libraries now so numerous.

“These libraries have improv’d the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps contribute in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defence of their privileges.”

Although The Library Company was established by members paying a fee and annual dues, it was open to the public “to make available substantial and comprehensive book resources for all the citizenry of Philadelphia.” Today the library consists of 969 shareholder members, but it is still open to everyone.

The Library Company of Philadelphia fell upon hard times during the Great Depression and it went bankrupt in 1941. The Philadelphia Public Library administered The Library Company’s rich historic collections from 1941 to 1955.

Rare book dealer Edwin Wolf 2nd was asked to take an inventory of the library’s vast collection and was appointed its librarian in 1952. He turned its negative financial situation around and set the library in a new direction. In 1955 The Library Company ended its relationship with the city’s public library and was on its own again.

From 1879 to 1966 The Library Company was located in a huge Parthenon-like structure with massive Doric columns on a four-acre site in South Philadelphia. Insiders called it “The Great Pile.” In his will, wealthy eccentric James Rush, a physician who died in 1869, left $1 million to erect the building.

There were many codicils attached to his bequest. He and his wife, Phoebe Anne Rush, were to be buried in the library, the chairs in the library were to be austere without upholstery, no poetry, biographies of unknown persons or daily newspapers were to be permitted.

The Library Company sold the building and the four acres to the city in 1966. The old library has stood vacant ever since, a landmark eyesore. When the move was made, the remains of Dr. Rush and his wife were reburied in the courtyard of the new library under their original tombstones.

“There was always this rumor that Phoebe Rush was buried wearing a fantastic collection of jewelry,” recalled Wolf. “We opened her coffin when the move was made. No jewelry.”

In addition to its endowments, fund drives and memberships, an important source of income for The Library Company has been a profitable, four-story downtown garage that it owns. It does not receive any public funding.

The Library Company of Philadelphia today is a research library, not a lending library as it was in the past. In addition to its books it is filled with many historic treasures, works of art, 18th Century furniture, and memorabilia from prominent colonial families. Benjamin Franklin’s hand-cranked static electricity machine, for example, is here.

But for scholars, authors, historians and graduate students, the real treasures are the 18th- and 19th-Century books. Those who use the library come from all over the nation and from many different parts of the world.

Rebecca Larson, 30, who comes from Santa Barbara, is here doing research for a Harvard Ph.D. dissertation about 18th-Century Quaker women who were traveling ministers.

She has been spending a month poring through journals kept by Quaker women ministers during the 1700s. “These were women, many with husbands and children, who felt they had a divine call to leave their families for months, sometimes years, and travel throughout the colonies preaching the word of God,” explained Larson.

“Some of the women traveled by ship to the British Isles to preach as they wandered the countryside there. Others came from the British Isles to America to preach here. I’m the first person since the early mid- and late-1700s to run my fingers through these pages and read many of these journals. It’s an amazing story. For me, The Library Company of Philadelphia is a gold mine.”

It is a gold mine for anyone doing research on any subject pertaining to the 18th and 19th centuries.