In June 1871, representatives from The Franklin Society, the Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, The Franklin Lyceum, and the Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers met to form a Free Public Library, Art Gallery, and a Museum of Natural History, combining their private libraries.The library first opened in February, 1878, on the second floor of the former Butler Exchange building at now Kennedy Plaza, and purchased a location at Snow Street, just two years later. In 1896, the library broke ground on the current location at Washington Street, with a gift of $268,500 by John Nicholas Brown I, paying more than half the final cost of $387,000. Brown died just six weeks after the library opened March 1900. Opening with 93,000 volumes, the collection has since grown to over 1.4 million. The library began the biggest library renovation in state history in 2019 at a cost of $25 million to renovate the Empire Street addition which was originally built in 1954.
Collections
The Providence Public Library is home to many specialty collections including World War I and II propaganda, Irish culture and literature, art, architecture, and more. The library also actively collects local historical items, such as maps, charts, newspapers, photographs, and family and neighborhood histories directly relating to Providence, and Rhode Island. An extensive collection of whaling and maritime items features 800 voyage log books, 550 blueprints and technical drawings, and 11 scale ship models created by Alfred S. Brownell who donated the collection in the 1950s. The Caleb C. Harris Collection on the Civil War and Slavery, purchased in 1884, is the library's largest collection featuring over 10,000 books, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, newspapers from the 18th century relating to slavery. Items include a large collection of translations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and letters written home by Rhode Island soldiers during the Civil War. The Updike Collection of printing started in 1910, with the encouragement and contribution of Daniel Berkeley Updike, the founder of Merrymount Press. The collection has grown to over 7,500 volumes, 600 letters, hundreds of prints, and type specimen books dating to the 16th century. The collection also contains three printing presses, punches and a type set.
