In 1939 East Northport residents formed the Library Association of East Northport to establish a public library in the community. As a letter from this group to the state department of education explains, “East Northport … stretches far to house its 5,500 inhabitants. They are largely farmers, largely second generation Americans and of an extremely cosmopolitan aspect – Germans, Poles, Italians, Slavs … A number of houses are being continually built in East Northport ... The community is growing steadily … The problem of children and others traveling the three miles each way [to the Northport Public Library] is hard to surmount.”
The school district offered six hundred dollars to help with initial costs and donated space in the old East Northport School, vacant since the year before when Larkfield School opened down the street. The East Northport Public Library opened as a branch of the Northport Public Library in June 1940 with 321 registered patrons and 1,200 books. During the first year both the book collection and the number of residents with library cards doubled.
A fire destroyed the library in 1945. With help from the community, most of the books were saved. Boy Scouts played an important role by forming a book brigade to carry the books to a nearby store. For the next four years the library was housed in temporary quarters in the Leighton building across the street.
Damaged beyond repair, the school building was demolished and a new library building erected on the site in 1949. This building, expanded by a shelving area in 1966, served the community until the mid-1990s. By then it was too small to accommodate the growth of the community and the expansion of library services. In 1997 it was replaced at the same location by the present East Northport Public Library.
