Backdrop For A New Library
The Buffalo Public Library drew its origins from the Young Men's Association--an organization formed in the winter of 1836 for the "mutual improvement in literature and science" of the city's young men (Commercial Advertiser, February 20th, 1936). It would absorb the collections of two existing libraries, the Buffalo Library and the Buffalo Lyceum, and charge a subscription for access. A spate of expansions would land the Young Men's Association in St. James Hall and Hotel at Main, Eagle, and Washington streets in 1864. Among its tenants were the Buffalo Historical Society (Now the Buffalo History Museum), the Fine Arts Academy (predecessor to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum), the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences (Now the Buffalo Science Museum), and the Grosvenor Library.
By the 1880s, the need for new facilities grew urgent, with shelving becoming scarce and fear of a fire damaging the collection more apparent. The Young Men's Association solicited designs for a new building, and received responses from eleven architects, including H. H. Richardson. The winning bid would go to Cyrus Eidlitz, whose proposed building would be completed in 1887 as the Young Men's Association renamed itself the Buffalo Library. Its move to a new fireproof building would be shortly justified, its previous home of the St. James Hotel falling victim to a blaze only a month after the dedication of the new building. A second renaming would follow, after financial troubles led the Buffalo Library to seek a contract with the city in 1897 that would declare it the Buffalo Public Library and allow its collection to be circulated by the residents of the city for free.
The Grosvenor Library largely developed in parallel with the Buffalo Public Library. Established through a donation by the wealthy merchant Seth Grosvenor in 1871, the Grosvenor Library would quickly grow a reference collection focusing on, among other subjects, law, medicine, music, and genealogy. While the Buffalo Public Library occupied its newly constructed home at Lafayette Square, the Grosvenor Library constructed a building at Edward and Franklin in 1891. This, along with the adjacent Cyclorama building, would be the Grosvenor Library's home until its merger with the Buffalo Public Library and the Erie County Library in 1953 and the subsequent construction of a new Central Library in 1964.
The Erie County Library, established in 1947, would provide bookmobile services and centralized cataloging, circulation, and other library services to communities and independent libraries throughout the county.
Even prior to official efforts in the 1950s, the neccesity for a new Central Library were becoming more and more apparent. As with previous buildings, the growing collections left less space for patrons and staff--the 1955 B&ECPL annual report notes that readers were "subject to poor ventilation, noise, and confusion of old and badly designed buildings." Reportedly, the floors of the Eidlitz designed building were even sagging from the weight of the shelving.
By 1955, the Library Board began efforts to secure a site and submitted recommendations to the Erie County Board of Supervisors; by 1957, James William Kideney and Associates, Paul Hyde Harbach, and Elon B. Clark, Jr., were appointed as architects for the project and were tasked with preparing schematics and cost estimates on three possible sites. By April of 1958, the present location of the Library was selected as site for the new Central Library, and later that year a "terminal date" for construction of the new building was set for December 8, 1960.