Libraries in Sackets Harbor

Sept. 13, 1815 — A library in Sackets Harbor is dedicated. Credit for the library and reading room is given to Dr. Starkwather, who ran an Apothecary store on West Main Street. Trustees of the library included Elisha Camp, Land Agent, and Justin Butterfield, a prominent store owner and two years later a member of the village board. The library ran for about 12 years.

1827 — The New Hounsfield Library is begun with 500 volumes. It survived about four years.

1831 — The Watertown and Hounsfield Library is established and dedicated in the village.

1899 — Marietta Pickering Hay establishes the Pickering-White Library, a Free Association library, in the Memorial Chime Tower as one of her gifts to the residents of the village. This library was renamed in 1906, after Marietta died, at the time it received its charter from the New York State Library Albany. Hay Memorial Library has operated continuously since it opened in 1900.

Marietta’s Libraries

Dewitt and Marietta Hay, like many wealthy people of their time, each collected extensive personal libraries. During the late 1800’s many of these personal libraries were becoming the nuclei of the collections of public libraries. Marietta planned to use Dee’s books to start a library in their shared community of Tarrytown and her books to start a library in Sackets Harbor. No appropriate place was found to house a Tarrytown library, so she turned to Dee’s native Lake George area. Eventually the Dewitt Clinton Hay library was built onto the back of the Presbyterian church in Caldwell. It was no coincidence that both Marietta’s Caldwell library and her Sackets Harbor library found homes connected to Presbyterian churches. The denomination had a long-standing belief that education and libraries were a part of its mission.

In Sackets Harbor, the building of a new Presbyterian church provided Marietta with the opportunity to combine her renewed gift of a chime of bells with a new gift of a library. Her library would be free of memberships or dues for use by any village resident. It was usual for libraries in 1800’s to charge Association fees. Marietta looked upon her library as a gift to the residents of the Village, and so hers was a Free Association library. Those who chose to contribute voluntary dues toward its operation became members of the Association. A tower over the corner entrance of the new church would house both bells and library. Though born in Sackets Harbor, by this time Marietta was living in Tarrytown, and her heart was failing, so she relied upon her friend Walter B. Camp to carry out her plan. Doing business many miles away by written letters was sometimes frustrating. A bank would not consent to grant a mortgage on a building that would be owned and paid for by two different entities. After months of impatient letters and official papers were sent back and forth between Marietta and Mr. Camp the matter was resolved. The Presbyterian Society accepted the tower and its contents in trust for all the residents of Sackets Harbor. The entire church and tower building were dedicated in August 1900.

Marietta named her Sackets Harbor library the Pickering-White Free Library, after her father’s and her mother’s families.

Marietta set up two endowments in her will for the continuation of the tower and library. She instructed that fifty percent of the interest income from each endowment was to be reinvested to grow the principle and fifty percent was to help cover expenses. One bequest was meant to maintain the Tower and chimes and help pay the chimer. The other bequest was to purchase books and works of art to add to the collection.

The base of the Tower is also the narthex, or vestibule, of the church. In one corner, a door leads to the circular, iron stairs that climb up to four more levels. The fifth level houses the console, used to play the bells. From there a ladder and a hatch in the ceiling lead to the open gallery where the ten bells hang. From the stair hand rail was hung a canvas side curtain to lend a feeling of security to climbers.

Marietta referred to the first floor of the Pickering-White Library, (the room above the narthex, so second level of the building) as the Study, since it housed serious works intended for use by men. Some of these books were from Dewitt’s own collection.

Women in turn of the century long, narrow skirts, corsets and high heels continued climbing round to higher floors for lighter reading and the curios on display. Besides light fiction, the second library floor included music for guitar and flute, games, stereoscope pictures, and small statuary. There were also watercolors by Dewitt and sketchbooks filled during their travels together.

The third library floor was taken over by a jinrikisha from Japan. In several pieces, this rickshaw had to be pulled up the outside of the tower using ropes, hauled in through a window, and reassembled. It was meant to be accompanied by other large pieces of art, but the room was never completed.

Hay Memorial Library

The Pickering-White Free Library was popular among the citizens of Sackets Harbor, but its name was less so. More and more, people referred to the Hay Library. So when an official charter was registered with the New York State Library in Albany, in 1906, Marietta’s library became Hay Memorial Library.

By 1918 the tower rooms were too small for the collection and patrons of Hay Memorial Library. There were legal issues in adding to a church building, while using money from the endowment meant for the library. But, eventually a work-around was achieved. A two-story addition was built across the whole Broad Street face of the church, with the Broad Street wall duplicating the original facade. The windows repeated the former outside windows, except that the only stained glass was a pink border around each. Even the rose window in the large dormer was repeated, but with clear glass. The legal work-around was that the only entries to the library needed to be from the Tower, not the church, so that it could be called the Tower Extension. So, the Study, on the first floor of the original library, one level up from ground level, was connected to the new library addition. A patron could choose to take the circular stair one flight up the tower, go through the study, down three steps and be on the upper level of the new Hay Memorial Library. There was also an entry to the new library from the base of the Tower, right next to the double doors to the sanctuary of the church. However, there was no way to pass from the church to the library without going through the Tower. By 1925, most of the nearly 20,000 books and magazines for adults and children were displayed on the first floor of the new library. As late as the early 21st century adults in their 90’s could remember doing their high school homework at study tables on the second floor.

Up until the early 1960’s the church played a significant role in Library operations. In 1966 a totally autonomous Library Board was elected from within the Library Association.

Many of the curios and works of art left by Marietta had been broken or stolen. In 1995, community volunteers had moved all of the remaining books, curios, and artwork into the first floor Tower Study.

More legal complications arose when the Library again outgrew its facility. Could Hay Memorial Library leave the Tower annex and take with it the endowment that Marietta intended for the collection? After months of negotiations they could. The Trust was legally separated. Sackets Harbor Presbyterian Church was left with the half that was designated for the Tower, while the Library Board could use the half intended for a library collection. A new building was built on a neighboring site. In spring 2003, community residents took part in the “book brigade.” They lined up between the two buildings and passed much of the collection, hand to hand, from the old library to the new one.

The books that could be identified as belonging to the original Pickering-White Library are now displayed in the current-day Hay Memorial Library, next door to, but not connected to, its prior homes in the Tower and church building annex.

Library information from research by Beth Burdick