It’s a place of paradoxes. It’s a stone’s throw from one of the busiest intersections in downtown, but many lifelong New Haveners have never seen it. It’s occupied its 20-foot-wide four-story Queen Anne-style row house at 847 Chapel Street for 141 years — yet most New Haveners have never heard of it. It’s a private library, […]
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Hartford Business Journal and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Hartford and Connecticut business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Hartford Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
It’s a place of paradoxes. It’s a stone’s throw from one of the busiest intersections in downtown, but many lifelong New Haveners have never seen it.
It’s occupied its 20-foot-wide four-story Queen Anne-style row house at 847 Chapel Street for 141 years — yet most New Haveners have never heard of it.
It’s a private library, which sounds exclusive, but it was actually chartered by working men who would not have passed the social muster needed for membership in the private gentlemen’s clubs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“It” is the Institute Library. Founded in 1826, it is the oldest independent lending library in New Haven. (It is also the only one.) Today it is one of only a handful of circulating membership libraries in North America.
The Institute Library is a historic artifact that’s a product of the era in which it was founded (early 19th century) and unique to its place. “New Haven is very idiosyncratic,” observes Eva Geertz, the library’s operations manager and sole employee. “And so is the Institute Library.”
It is like a snapshot frozen in time. Wooden bookcases — the newest of which date from the 1930s — cradle row after row of dusty hardcover volumes, “a collection of what people in New Haven were reading for an extraordinarily long time.”
For years the library purchased no new titles because, simply, there was no budget for acquisitions. (That changed last autumn when Geertz placed an order for two dozen new books.)
Even the cataloguing system is unique to the institution. The classification system was devised more than a century ago by William Alanson Borden, the library’s first professionally trained librarian. Borden’s original card catalogue can be found only on the second story at 847 Chapel. It is still in use today. The library’s catalogue is not online — the Institute Library is pretty much a tech-free zone.
Also frozen in time — and not in a good way — is maintenance on the 140-year-old building. Maryann Ott, who became chair of the library’s board of directors at the beginning of 2019, is working to breathe new life into the Institute Library. Ott, managing director of the NewAlliance Foundation, must confront declining membership and the budget crisis caused by deferred maintenance of the building’s roof, which will cost $400,000 to repair.
A strictly-by-the-numbers approach would be to sell the building. “But the building is the library,” Ott says. “All libraries are seeking to reinvent themselves and retain their relevance in the community.” The Institute Library is no different.
“We have an art gallery,” says Ott. “We have a beautiful biography room that’s hosted everything from poetry readings to concerts to baby showers. We also have a collection of books, including some that you would never find in a public library — poetry, biography, history. Books that you could never find on Amazon, but that you find by browsing our shelves.’”
Bibliophiles and history buffs can join the Institute Library for as little as $25 and become part of a (still-) living and breathing piece of the city’s history. Visit www.InstituteLibrary.org to learn more.
