Honoring the past, embracing the future

It began with two neighbors and a good idea. In May 1906, Miss Susan E. Frost and Miss Lillian Roberts thought people in the village would like to exchange books, and the Springvale Literary Club was born. Membership cost a dollar a year; Frank H. Dexter was hired as librarian at fifteen dollars a year; and on opening day, fifty volumes went out the door. For nearly thirty years, patrons could borrow exactly one book at a time.

Mrs. Angelette H. Gile became librarian in 1921 and served for 32 years, steering the library from Dexter’s stationery shop to the second floor of the Key Bank building, then to the Bradford Block on Main Street. After her death, Dorothy Q. Garvin stepped down from the Board of Trustees to take up the post.

In 1939 the library found its permanent home, the Charles H. Frost residence of about 1892 at 443 Main Street, and grew into it: an adult reading room, a children’s library, all of it funded by community effort, down to the children’s penny collections and a Tom Thumb Wedding fundraiser.

By the 1980s the building was full to the rafters. A bequest from Trustee L. Orlo Williams made an expansion possible; the original Frost house was set on a new foundation with new wings for children’s services and additional stacks. The renovated library reopened on August 20, 2001, under Director Lesley Unger-Mochrie, and the story keeps going, one card at a time.