St. Louis Mercantile Library

The St. Louis Mercantile Library, established 1846 in St. Louis, Missouri, is a subscription library, that claims to be the oldest library west of the Mississippi River still in service. [ [http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/culture.htm Stlouis.missouri.org] ]

The library is currently on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

It has 600 linear feet of papers, ledgers, and printed materials currently in 26 departmental or other record groups [ [http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/special_collections/directory/slma-117.html umsl.edu] ]

History

In December 1845 a group of merchants established the library "where young men could pass their evenings agreeably and profitably, and thus be protected from the temptations to folly that ever best unguarded youth in large towns."

On April 19, 1846 it opened at Pine and Main Streets in what is now occupied by the Jefferson Expansion National Memorial. James E. Yeatman was the first president. Yeatman would go on to be one of the founder of the Mercantile Bank as well as Washington University in St. Louis. By 1847 it had 1,600 volumes and 283 subscribing members. In 1851 it merged with the St. Louis Lyceum. [ [http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/images/Mercantile%20Photos/mercantile%20timeline.pdf St. Louis Mercantile Timeline] ]

In 1854 it moved to a new building at 510 Locust Street on the corner of Broadway and Locust streets. The structure included the 2,000 seat Grand Hall, the largest auditorium in the city at the time. The first session of the Missouri Constitutional Convention in 1861 met in the library voting to stay in the Union at the beginning of the American Civil War. Another constutional convention in 1865 abolished slavery.

The St. Louis Symphony played its first concerts there. A series of lectures were held in the auditorium, with noted speakers including Mark Twain, Carl Schurz, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oscar Wilde.

In 1884 Robert S. Brookings began a campaign to build a new fireproof building. The older building was demolished in 1887 and a new cornerstone was laid by Henry Shaw (botanist). In 1889 the new six story structure was dedicated on the same site. The new structure had no lecture hall, but did include an elevator.

The Mercantile Library was the official library for Washington University in St. Louis. [ [http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~landc/bookplates/20_4_StLouisMercantile.htm glis.utexas.edu] ]

With the opening of the free St. Louis Public Library in 1893, the Mercantile Library's mission changed to focus on its major historic collections of books, papers, and art works. [ [http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/heritage/history/culture.htm Stlouis.missouri.org] ]

In 1998 it moved to the current location in the Thomas Jefferson Library building on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. [ [http://www.umsl.edu/library/about_libraries/past_announcements.html umsl.edu] ] The library still maintains its subscription model, but its collections are generally open to the public.

The library offers free art and history exhibits of materials from its collections.

Collections

Among the collections:
*John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library - 10,000 volumes, 600 linear feet of railroad documents and photographs [ [http://www.umsl.edu/services/merclib/barriger/barriger.html umsl.edu] ]
*Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library - River documents
*Clippings and photo morgue of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (10,000,000 documents) [ [http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/special_collections/directory/slma-112.html umsl.edu] ]
*Official file copies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
*Photo and film archives of Trans World Airlines
*Complete first edition double elephant folio of John James Audubon's The Birds of America (the only edition signed by the author in existence)
*The purported journal of Auguste Chouteau describing the founding of St. Louis
* Harriet Hosmer's marble sculpture, "Beatrice Cenci" (1857)

References

External links

* [http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/ Web site of Mercantile Library]