CHAPTER IX

The University Settlement Library

The University Settlement was organized in 1887 under the name of the Neighborhood Guild, by Dr. Stanton Coit, the Guild being the outgrowth of a club of six boys formed by Dr. Coit the year before in his rooms at 146 Forsyth Street and called the "Lily Pleasure Club." To the boys' club were added a girls' club, a kindergarten, a penny provident bank, and other instruments of social reform.

Within two years the work grew to such an extent that larger quarters were needed, and to provide relief, the old-fashioned three-story dwelling across the way at 147 Forsyth Street was rented in 1889. A few hundred volumes were brought together in a hall bedroom and offered to members for home reading. Through the reminiscent haze of ten years this library was described in the annual report of the University Settlement for 1899 as follows:

"There its collection of four hundred volumes hid a woebegone appearance behind sleazy, green cambric curtains, and the first ingenious urchin who arrived on library afternoons before the unwary librarian, had the pleasure of shuffling the charging cards out of all semblance of alphabetical order. A deal table, drawn across an open doorway, was the charging desk, the contents of which, there being no key, was participated in with fine communistic spirit by the humblest as well as the highest.

"The library was opened once a week, and it shared the freezing atmosphere of that damp, old house, with an uproarious boys' club, whose members when they had no ball or game to play with, shouted to keep themselves active. Quiet was unknown, and that afternoon was considered pleasant in which no child had fallen into a passion of tears at delay in getting a book. This delay was overcome by the agile, who dove underneath the table, appearing with an irresistible smile of superiority within the sacred precincts of the green curtains. Longfellow's poems, Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare,' and Bible stories were not to be had for the mere asking, and it behooved the alert to take the adage of the early bird to heart."*

The Neighborhood Guild took part in various schemes for betterment put on foot in the immediate vicinity, but soon deemed it best to concentrate its work for economy of effort and for best use of its limited funds. Consequently the University Settlement Society was incorporated on March 1, 1892, "to bring men and women of education into closer relations with the laboring classes in this city for their mutual benefit." In 1893 it moved from Forsyth Street to a four-story tenement, remodelled for its needs, at 26 Delancey Street. Here the library was opened daily, its stock of books having grown to between one and two thousand and its annual circulation to over twenty thousand vol

* Year book of the University Settlement Society, 1899, pages 40-41.

umes. Miss Helen Moore, the first paid librarian, had then just been appointed. The work was mainly with the children, who were charged five cents a year for membership dues. There was a charge of twenty-five cents for adults, but at that time the feeling prevailed that work with the elders was hopeless in the absence of Russian, Polish, and German books. For this work funds were lacking, as well as teachers.

In November, 1894, the circulation for the month was reported as 2,185; there were then not quite 2,000 volumes on the shelves and new readers were pleading for registration at the rate of 141 a month. The nationalities reported were mainly Russian and Polish Jews, with a few Italians.

On Friday, December 23, 1898, the Settlement moved into its own home, on its own land, a five-story brick building, sixty-seven feet in front by eighty feet deep, at 184 Eldridge Street, replacing a row of old-fashioned dwellings with pillared fronts that dated back to a time when the region was a section of homes and comfort. Here adequate quarters were given to the library on the second floor of the building, and here it remained until after it had been turned over to The New York Public Library.

The large room with its soft green coloring, open fireplace, spaciousness, light, well-adapted furnishings, was in marked contrast to the dingy quarters of 26 Delancey Street. "Apparently the change from the hot and crowded quarters in Delancey Street to those wherein light and air abound created no special enthusiasm among its young readers. They accepted the change, as children do, with remarkable celerity of adjustment. When one of the little girls saw the boxes of books being loaded on the truck, she cried out, ‘Oh, Delancey Street is moving!" But the fact that the Library had left its old habitation made very little difference to her. She followed the truckman the two blocks to see where he was going with Delancey Street, and in the afternoon she came to change her book. The things she cared for, the books and the people who gave them out, were the same. It was remarkable to notice how little the change affected the orderliness of the children's conduct. There was no unusual excitement, no rush, no outward expressions of joyousness. These children take their pleasures soberly, as they bear their griefs patiently.

"The boys betrayed their consciousness of the larger space in a singular way. Many of them forgot to take off their hats, an illustration of the suspension of an acquired habit through the emotion of surprise. One of them, reminded of his transgression and comically overcome with the enormity of it, said, 'Oh, please excuse me; I didn't think I was in a room. It seemed like outdoors.'

"The subtle influence of environment has had its effect. The boys who, last year, played fox and geese around the old table, might have reaped a harvest of mischievous delight in denuding the window boxes of their flowers during the summer, but nothing was disturbed. And the children, on a snowy

Saturday afternoon, sitting dreamily in a circle of kindergarten chairs before a blazing wood fire in the reading room, show the restful spell of this same environment. Singularly enough, the open fires have an educational as well as an esthetic value. Many of the older girls in the grammar grades, who have never before seen a fireplace, have asked if this was the kind the early colonists had, the pictures of which are to be seen in the histories, and thus the stories of the Pilgrims have got a bit of local color."

The Library was, of course, primarily a department of the Settlement, and found its field among Settlement frequenters, and expended its energy in Settlement ideals. Its readers were largely children, its stock of books was suited most closely to their needs and demands, the hard working parents lacking time, desire, ability to read books in English. Material in greatest demand was text books, Bible stories, dictionaries, American literature, if we except the constant and universal demand for fairy tales. When new quarters in the new building made room for a wider selection and the possibilities of the institution became more widely known, older readers increased in numbers. Exact figures of use are not available, but it is probable that the young children furnished over half the total number of readers, the remainder consisting of the younger working men and girls employed by day and reading at night for help in their work or in preparation for the regents or other school examinations, with a sprinkling to be classed as miscellaneous.

With the carelessness and thoughtlessness of youth wear and tear were severe, the annual increase of new accessions providing but a slender margin of growth when offset by the number of volumes read to pieces. To the credit of the children be it said that in these early years the librarian reported but little wanton destruction except when fanaticism led to the tearing or cutting out of the word "Christ" or the picture of a cross or some other symbol antagonistic to the devout Hebrew.

Though readers came, in the main, from the immediate vicinity, four blocks in either direction marking the usual limits of readers' residence, the Library did not confine its work solely to this region. When the West Side branch of the Settlement was opened at 38 King Street the parent centre was able to furnish some five hundred volumes for the branch library in January, 1901. And Eldridge Street, in the heart of New York's "East Side" discovered villages in up-state counties where reading facilities were less than its own, where children walked four miles to a district school devoid of books, where a member of one of its clubs met with a boy of thirteen who had never heard of Robinson Crusoe, Cinderella, or Abraham Lincoln; and to these communities such of the Settlement books as could be spared were forwarded with messages of good will (Year book, 1899, page 43).

In the early spring of 1897 was begun the experiment of circulating books in the boys' prison in the Tombs, where the Public Education Associa