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| Photo from Bonnevillemariner.com |
John Scott and his Yale buddies were worried about their community. Even though their town was growing and business was booming, they noticed a lack of intellectually curiosity, people they met didn’t seem to be particularly interested in serious conversation anymore and everyone was paying too much attention to having fun and feeling good.
Sound familiar?
The dumbing down of America is certainly a familiar lament of our modern times. But John and his friends are not modern guys. They lived 250 years ago, in New York City, before America existed. I read their intriguing story in the book The New York Society Library: 250 Years by Henry Cooper and Jenny Lawerence.
To keep their minds from turning to the sensuous pleasures around them, William Livingston, John Scott and William Smith decided to meet each week to discuss serious ideas and publish their opinions in a journal called “The Independent Reflector”. And so the Society for Improving in Useful Knowledge was born (colonial bloggers). By 1754 the small group had grown and the men decided to start a subscription for a “useful, ornamental publick” library that “anyone” (relatively speaking) could join. The Society’s collection, nicknamed,’ The City Library’, was created in City Hall on Wall Street. Membership was a whopping ten shilling a year. In 1772 they received a charter from King George.
It’s hard for me to imagine New York, a city more American than peanut butter, as a British Colony.
But it’s even harder to imagine what happened to New York City in 1776. George Washington lost the Battle of Long Island and British troops flooded the city. It was soon the Tory capital of America and remained so for the duration of the war. Fires raveged the city and soldiers looted the library, using book pages for rifle wadding and as trade for grog.
After seven long years the war ended and amazingly the library emerged in tact. Hidden books were slowly returned to their shelves from hiding places and private homes around the city. The City Library was then granted a monumental reward for it’s years of service and suffering; it became the original Library of Congress.
In 1785 New York City was America’s first Federal Capital. City Hall became Federal Hall and Congress, including President Washington and VP John Adams moved in and got to work. The new members of the government frequented the upstairs library, which now included 3,100 books and 239 members. You may be familiar with some of its regular customers: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Chief Justice John Jay and Rufus King. Always fastidious, the library still has records of what the men checked out (Burr borrowed a volume of Swift).
Alas, fame and fortune are fleeting and the City Library was left behind on the noisy streets of NYC when the Federal Government moved to Philadelphia in 1790. The City Government moved back to City Hall and the Library was born again as the New York Society Library. By 1793 the library had 892 members and 5,000 volumes and it was finally time to build a place of their own. The library trustees, all city big wigs, leased land on Nassau Street, five blocks from City Hall, and started building what would be the library’s home for the next 40 years.
So the next time someone complains that the library is slow to adapt, tell them about the New York Society Library that started as a British men’s club for serious thinkers, received a charter from King George, hunkered down to survive the Revolutionary War and the occupation of NYC, served its new country as the Library of Congress and then began an illustrious career, now in its 3rd century.
I’d call that pretty flexible.
Sound familiar?
The dumbing down of America is certainly a familiar lament of our modern times. But John and his friends are not modern guys. They lived 250 years ago, in New York City, before America existed. I read their intriguing story in the book The New York Society Library: 250 Years by Henry Cooper and Jenny Lawerence.
To keep their minds from turning to the sensuous pleasures around them, William Livingston, John Scott and William Smith decided to meet each week to discuss serious ideas and publish their opinions in a journal called “The Independent Reflector”. And so the Society for Improving in Useful Knowledge was born (colonial bloggers). By 1754 the small group had grown and the men decided to start a subscription for a “useful, ornamental publick” library that “anyone” (relatively speaking) could join. The Society’s collection, nicknamed,’ The City Library’, was created in City Hall on Wall Street. Membership was a whopping ten shilling a year. In 1772 they received a charter from King George.
It’s hard for me to imagine New York, a city more American than peanut butter, as a British Colony.
But it’s even harder to imagine what happened to New York City in 1776. George Washington lost the Battle of Long Island and British troops flooded the city. It was soon the Tory capital of America and remained so for the duration of the war. Fires raveged the city and soldiers looted the library, using book pages for rifle wadding and as trade for grog.
After seven long years the war ended and amazingly the library emerged in tact. Hidden books were slowly returned to their shelves from hiding places and private homes around the city. The City Library was then granted a monumental reward for it’s years of service and suffering; it became the original Library of Congress.
In 1785 New York City was America’s first Federal Capital. City Hall became Federal Hall and Congress, including President Washington and VP John Adams moved in and got to work. The new members of the government frequented the upstairs library, which now included 3,100 books and 239 members. You may be familiar with some of its regular customers: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Chief Justice John Jay and Rufus King. Always fastidious, the library still has records of what the men checked out (Burr borrowed a volume of Swift).
Alas, fame and fortune are fleeting and the City Library was left behind on the noisy streets of NYC when the Federal Government moved to Philadelphia in 1790. The City Government moved back to City Hall and the Library was born again as the New York Society Library. By 1793 the library had 892 members and 5,000 volumes and it was finally time to build a place of their own. The library trustees, all city big wigs, leased land on Nassau Street, five blocks from City Hall, and started building what would be the library’s home for the next 40 years.
So the next time someone complains that the library is slow to adapt, tell them about the New York Society Library that started as a British men’s club for serious thinkers, received a charter from King George, hunkered down to survive the Revolutionary War and the occupation of NYC, served its new country as the Library of Congress and then began an illustrious career, now in its 3rd century.
I’d call that pretty flexible.
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