Newberry Library
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| Type | Independent research library |
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| Established | 1887 |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois, US |
| Other information | |
| Director | David Spadafora |
| Website | www |
The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located in Chicago, Illinois, that has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history and cultural production of Western Europe and the Americas over the last six centuries. Core collection strengths support research in several subject areas, including maps, travel, and exploration; music from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century; early contact between Western colonizers and Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere; the personal papers of twentieth-century American journalists; the history of printing; and genealogy and local history. Although the Newberry is a noncirculating library, it welcomes researchers into the reading rooms who are at least 14 years old or in the ninth grade, and has a research topic corresponding to the nature of the collections. Additional public services are offered through exhibitions, meet-the-author lectures, adult education seminars, and other programming.
The Newberry was established in 1887 as the result of a bequest by Walter Loomis Newberry, an early Chicago resident and business leader involved in banking, shipping, real estate, and other commercial ventures. Newberry died at sea in 1868, while on a trip to France. He included in his will a provision of funds for the creation of a "free public library" should his daughters die without heirs. They did, and so, following the death of Newberry's widow, Julia Butler Newberry, in 1885, it was up to Newberry estate trustees William H. Bradley and Eliphalet W. Blatchford to bring the library to fruition.
Without much direction (Newberry did not leave behind many details regarding his vision for the library) and without its founder's personal collection as a foundation (Newberry's own collection of books perished in the Great Fire of 1871), the first officers and staff members were instrumental in forming the character of the Newberry.
The Newberry's first librarian, William Frederick Poole, was a major figure in the library world when he came to the Newberry. Poole saw the Newberry as a blank canvas on which he could project his ideas, which included and perhaps found their most impassioned articulation in the design and construction of libraries. In 1887-88 it was located at 90 La Salle Street, in 1889-90 at 338 Ontario Street, and in 1890-93 at the northwest corner of State and Oak Streets. The present building, designed by Poole and architect Henry Ives Cobb (1859–1931), opened in 1893. It is located at 60 West Walton Street, across from Washington Square. It is a structure in the Spanish Romanesque architectural style, built of Connecticut granite.
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