Princeton’s public library, built in 1883 of Milford Pink granite and Longmeadow brownstone, was the gift of Mr. Edward A. Goodnow, a Princeton boy born and raised on the old Goodnow homestead (113 Goodnow Road) now owned by Charles T. Crocker II – current Audubon Sanctuary. This gift and the building of Bagg Hall costing $15,000, was a memorial to his first two wives, who were sisters (he had four– but not at the same time) and contained besides the library and reading rooms a large built-in fireproof vault, two sizable school rooms with separate entrances for boys and girls, a tower room with a clock, the bell of which is operated by a wheel as are the Paul Revere bells.
On the afternoon when the Methodist church was struck by lighting and burned, 1893, Josiah Gregory climbed to the clock tower and pounded the bell with a hammer for a more effective fire alarm.
In the nearly seventy years the Memorial Building has served as a library, there have been the following librarians:
Rev. Charles Nicklin – 1884–1885
Miss Susie Davis – 1885–1929
Rev. Frederic Donaldson – 1929–1942
Mr. H. Nason Arnold – 1942–1949
Mrs. William Arey – 1949
At one time, in the rooms on the west side of the building were housed grades one through twelve of the Center pupils. As enrollment increased the “Ladies’ dressing room” in the Town Hall was used as a Recitation room. The writer remembers that while waiting for the other class to be dismissed members of the incoming group spent their time and energy lifting the 50 pound weights which were kept under the massive safe in the Town Hall corridor. An additional classroom was evolved later by sheathing off a space in the boy’s basement of the Memorial building.
One advantage of this proximity of the school and library was the accessibility of the library reference books. Many a cold hour was spent in the unheated room pouring over icy tomes but it was freedom from the stuffy schoolroom.
A stipulation in the deed of gift was that the school rooms were to be vacated in the event of an expanding library’s needing them for its own purposes, and in 1906 the school was removed to its present building on Boylston Avenue.
Miss Ethel Mirick
This was copied from the Princeton News, Vol. I, No. 10, dated Christmas Issue, 1952 and clarified August 2015 by PHS Board Members.
Note: Since 1949 the Librarians have been:
Miss. Norma Passage – 1954 –1968
Mrs. Anita Woodward – 1968 –1971
Mrs. Ellen W. Howe – 1971 –1989
Mrs. Anne Moore & Nancy Flanders – 1975
Mrs. Wendy Pape – 1989 –2012
Mrs. Mary Barroll – 2013 – present