River Forest Public Library

The River Forest Public Library is currently located at 735 Lathrop in River Forest, Illinois. The library serves the local community and is also part of the Metropolitan Library System, which connects libraries in the south and west suburbs of Chicago through a shared catalog and other services. The current library building was designed by renowned prairie school architect William Eugene Drummond and was constructed in 1928-1929. ["A History of the River Forest Public Library" by Susan R. Hanes. Taken from pamphlet titled "River Forest Public Library, 1900-2000, Celebrating 100 Years."] An addition was added to the existing structure during the early 1990’s. The River Forest Public Library serves a community of about 11,000 and has approximately 9,000 cardholders and 70,000 items.

History

The River Forest Public Library was founded at the turn of the last century. In October of 1898, a member of the prominent River Forest Woman’s Club, Florence Ingalls, presented a memorandum to the Woman’s Club president stating that the club should be the impetus for the establishment of a public library in the community. In 1898 and 1899 the Woman’s Club worked to establish a tax levy to support the library and to set up elections to select the first library board of trustees. ["Reflections: A History of River Forest" by Harriet Hausman. 1975.] The library first opened up as a storefront in 1903 and was housed in another leased building in 1904. From 1905 through 1929 the library was located at 508 Park Avenue, on land donated by Mr. George Gertz, in a building built by R.C. Spencer, a prairie school architect. The library opened at 508 Park with 1000 volumes and the first librarian was Mrs. Stella H. Nida, who had a salary of $15 a month. The library was first used for a program in 1908. ["A History of the River Forest Public Library" by Susan R. Hanes. Taken from pamphlet titled "River Forest Public Library, 1900-2000, Celebrating 100 Years."] In the library volumes and use continued to grow and in 1928-1929 a new library building at 735 Lathrop Avenue was constructed. In the 1970’s the Friends of the Library group was created. Ground was broken on the addition to the library in 1989 and was completed in 1992.

The library is a contributing property to the River Forest Historic District. [cite web|url=http://gis.hpa.state.il.us/hargis/Reports/District_Report.aspx?RefNum=200203&HistDistRefNum=200203&FormType=Short|title=National Register Districts Report|publisher=Illinois Historic Preservation Agency]

Collections and Program Information

The library has about 70,000 items and contains a wide variety of materials for Children, Teens, and Adults. In addition to books, materials available for check-out include Videos, DVD’s, Music CD’s, and Audio books. The library also has a large number of current popular magazines as well as a variety of local, national, and financial newspapers. The library provides access to wide variety of databases online through the library website if you have a River Forest library card. Patrons can access full-text magazine and newspaper articles as well as resources on genealogy, health, history, literature criticism, and more through the online databases. The library also provides inter-library loan service for books and articles. The library has a special collection of River Forest historical documents and also has microfilm of the local paper, the "Forest Leaves" going back to 1903 (missing some years). The River Forest Public Library provides a wide variety of programs for Children, Teens, and Adults throughout the year. General programs for children include story-times, craft programs, and the annual summer reading program. Teen programs include gaming, crafts, and anime movie screenings. Adult programming varies widely and includes book discussions as well as the annual Fireside Chat series and Lyric Opera Lectures.

References

Additional resources on River Forest

"History of River Forest" by Albert Hall. 1938.
"River Forest: Origins, History, Founders, and Monuments" by Bradford Schwarz. 2005
"A Guidebook to the Architecture of River Forest" by Jeannette S. Fields, editor. 1990.
"River Forest History Files" Contains materials from 1876-2002.

External links

http://www.riverforestlibrary.org