Library’s history reflects growth of Monmouth County
BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer

The Monmouth County Library system has come a long way since its inception in 1922 when the Board of Chosen Freeholders passed a resolution to provide for the “establishment and maintenance of County Free Libraries.”

The initiative was placed on the November ballot and passed by a vote of 12,819 to 10,446. With its passage, Monmouth County became the fourth county library system to be established in the state.

The justification for the library is outlined in a booklet describing the history of the county library system from 1922 to 1985.

The long paragraph said that although the area was small, 479 square miles, it was well populated, especially in the northern section and along the shore. A large part of the county was farmland, and the towns and boroughs were small with the exception of Red Bank, which had a population of over 9,000. The only two cities, Long Branch and Asbury Park, both had populations over 12,000.

In 1923, the library began operations with the appointment of the Library Commission and the first librarian. The physical plant was modest, just a small room in the basement of the court house, the present Hall of Records in Freehold.

The commission purchased reference books, furniture, a typewriter, stationery and a second-hand Ford touring car, and a few months later, a Ford truck with a specially built body to hold the 8,500 books in circulation.

At that time, the headquarters facility was meant to be only an office with storage space and was not intended to be a circulating library.

The purpose of the library was to serve people in the rural areas who previously had no access to a library.

The arrangements were complicated by the diversity of the small libraries already established. Then, as now, there were exempt towns, which did not pay the library tax. Among them were Middletown, Freehold, Matawan and Keyport. There were eight small libraries not supported by local taxes, of which only two were free to the public, Oceanic Free Library, Rumson, and Farmingdale Library. The others were all subscription libraries used only by those who paid an annual or monthly fee.

During the 1920s, the library and its services grew and prospered. By 1924, there were 110 active stations, some in homes, local libraries or school buildings, and the logistics of routing the library truck became formidable.

The librarian drove the truck to the stations, planning to be at each one every four to six weeks. Books were exchanged, requests taken and brought out. Very often, the librarian was not able to complete the route, because the books were taken before she reached the end of her route.

At that time, the four largest stations were Keansburg, Ocean Grove, Red Bank and Brielle. During 1924, the book truck made 452 calls to stations and 30,322 books were lent.

By 1925, there were 116 stations and the office had to be moved to larger quarters in the old boiler house in Freehold, which had previously been used to store illegal liquor seized in raids.

In February 1938, the library moved again to a house at 69 West Main St. in Freehold and in 1939, Red Bank withdrew from the county system. During that year, direct bookmobile service began using a trailer pulled by a station wagon. The trailer carried about 800 books and was furnished with a desk and chairs, a fan in summer and a small coal stove in winter.

The circulation in 1940, doubled that of the previous year with about 3,000 borrowers using the trailer’s 10 routes. Also that year, the library moved again, to 80 Broad St. in Freehold. The bookmobile discontinued service during the war years because of the high cost of gasoline, but resumed in 1946.

New small libraries opened in Wanamassa and Deal. More access was gained by using the bookmobile for night service once a week and opening the headquarters library on Friday nights. In addition, children were given space of their own in the garage.

The ever present need for more space was met in 1976 when the library took over the whole house at 80 Broad St. Downstairs, the center room was used for an office and the old kitchen for processing. The front room became the circulation and catalog department. Nonfiction and mysteries were in the side and rear rooms, and fiction was shelved on the porch. The garage continued to be the children’s department and upstairs was the director’s office and two reference rooms.

At this point, the library began moving away from its founding concept of service to rural libraries and into the much larger field of reference and research for the county at large.

In 1961, the Friends of the Monmouth Library was formed and in 1962, a milestone was reached when negotiations began with the Township of Ocean Library Committee to build a library building. It was the first association library to receive a $50,000 grant from the state. This was the beginning of the branch system.

In 1964, plans for the building, which eventually became the Eastern Branch, were under consideration and the search for a suitable piece of land was undertaken.

In June 1965, the Board of Chosen Freeholders announced plans for two separate main libraries in the county. In October, the site for the first library was chosen, a 6-acre piece of land on the east side of Route 35, and in December the bookmobiles, extension collection, art department, processing and technical services moved to the former Buck Engineering Building in Freehold.

In April 1966, the new library in Ocean Township opened, ground was broken for the Eastern Branch in 1967, and Oceanport became a branch at this time, joining Ocean Township and Allentown.

The Eastern Branch was dedicated on October 1968 and two new branches joined the system, Marlboro and Wall.

In 1971, the headquarters moved to 25 Broad St., Freehold. The building was a former supermarket with 12,500 square feet on the main floor and 6,000 square feet in the basement.

In 1981, the Manalapan Township governing body presented the county with an 18-acre site on Symmes Drive to be used for a new library. Groundbreaking for the long-awaited new building for the western part of the county was held on July 19, 1984. The new building, at 85,000 square feet, was the largest public library in the state. According to Kranis, the headquarters library in Manalapan is now a 117,000-square-foot building, which it shares with the Monmouth County Archives.