Cleveland Public Library

Cleveland Public Library

Front entrance to the Cleveland Public Library's central location on Superior Avenue
Established	1869
Location	Cleveland, Ohio
Branches	27
Other information
Director	Felton Thomas, Jr.
Website	http://www.cpl.org

The Cleveland Public Library was founded in 1869 and is located in Cleveland, Ohio. It operates the Main Library on Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland, 27 branches throughout the city, a mobile library, a Public Administration Library in City Hall, and the Ohio Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Librarian William Howard Brett opened the library's first stand-alone children's room on February 22, 1898.Effie Louise Power was appointed Cleveland's first children's librarian.

In 1915, the Cleveland architectural firm of Walker and Weeks won a competition to design a new library building. Construction of their classical Renaissance design, delayed by the First World War, began in 1923 under Linda Anne Eastman. Eastman (1867–1963) was the first woman to head a major U.S. city library system and a pioneer in the modern library system. She opened bookshelves to patrons, replacing the New York Public Library system in which a librarian fetched the books.

The Main Library consists of two buildings. The older wing, completed on May 6, 1925 and renovated between 1997 and 1999, has five stories, each as high as two stories in most buildings. The renovations included the restoration of a large mural painted by Ora Coltman in 1934 for the Federal Arts Project. The work was done by the Intermuseum Conservation Association. The second building, named after former U.S. Congressman Louis Stokes, was dedicated in 1997. The two buildings are connected by underground corridor below the Eastman Reading Garden, which was designed by landscape architecture firm OLIN, and includes sculptures by Maya Lin and Tom Otterness.