Redwood Library is a little known jewel in Newport, RI, the city of famous opulence and mansions of a by-gone gilded age. Redwood is the oldest continuously operated lending library in the United States. It was the first building to be named in “Save America’s Treasures” program and “National Preservation Program.” Built on the apex of the hill it was the focal point in the Eighteenth Century. In 1747 architect Peter Harrison designed the wood building to look like stone in Neoclassical style, the first such building in America, like a Roman temple on a hillside overlooking tiny wooden houses of Colonial pilgrims. How out of place it must have seemed! Thomas Jefferson was 6 years old when this was built.
The land, which had been a bowling green, was given by Henry Collins, an educated man who wanted to make learning as lasting and widespread as possible.
Abraham Redwood, a wealthy Quaker merchant, gave 500 pounds British Sterling for books for the new library, the most important philanthropy of Colonial days in America. The Colonists made a list of which books they wanted to read and those they felt an educated man should read and ordered 755 titles from England in all areas of general and useful knowledge of the times, including physic (science), philosophy, literature, agriculture, sea-faring, law, and mathematics, history, geography, and more. Those original books from 1748-49 are in the library today, arranged as they were in Colonial times, by size instead of category, preceding Dewey Decimal system. Ezra Styles was the early librarian and later became the President of Yale.
By special permission you can still use these volumes in the reference room sitting at the original library table, with portraits of many of these pilgrims looking over your shoulder. Several of the paintings are early Gilbert Stuarts, recognizable by the sheen of the satin and silk fabrics in the clothing. In the corner stands the priceless William Clangate grandfather clock, designed with a special chain in back to pull, in order to repeat the most recent hour and quarter hour to tell the time in the dark if your candle and fire are out.
Redwood Library also has some more ancient books including a leaf of a Guttenberg Bible, a 1488 Euclid, and some calligraphy manuscripts which pre-date the printing press. There is a six volume History of England written in 1772 that was the gift of the author, Catherine McCauley, sent in esteem of the Rhode Island intellectual freedom. Perusing these books is a marvelous study of cultural history of the times.
In the same way it has always been run, this remarkable library is still serving local citizens who pay a nominal yearly subscription fee, which currently is $70. The Redwood Library is open five days a week now, but in the Colonial days it was open only on Thursdays from 3 – 5 PM for men to borrow books. Members could take out books by signing a list. Non-members could borrow books by placing the price of the book on deposit until the book was returned in good condition.
Cheryl Helms is now the library director, remarkable since in Colonial days no women could be library members and few could read because they were, by law, the chattel property of their husbands, and few men saw any necessity to educate women.
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