History:
The Glen Ridge Free Public Library was officially incorporated as a Free Public Library for the Borough of Glen Ridge in January 1912. It operated out of Glen Ridge Hall, now the PNC Bank building on Ridgewood Avenue. The minutes of that first meeting are still on file at the Library.
However, its earlier beginnings can be traced back to the "Clio Club", a literary society, which was started in 1890 and met in the home of Miss Henrietta Northall. The group put together a private collection of books, housed in a room in Miss Northall's home on Ridgewood Avenue.
In 1892 Glen Ridge Hall was built and the Glen Ridge Literary Association, still a private group, moved into the first floor. In 1912, when the residents voted to officially create a municipally supported library, the collection from the Association was turned over to the Borough, with Miss Margaret Brower as the first paid librarian.
The library remained in Glen Ridge Hall until 1918, when Henry S. Chapman offered to pay for the construction of a building if the Borough would donate the land. The present site at the corner of Ridgewood and Bloomfield Avenues was chosen and construction of the building began in 1917. The Glen Ridge Public Library opened its doors to the public at 240 Ridgewood Avenue in May, 1918, and has served the residents of Glen Ridge ever since.
The building was originally lit with gaslights and heated with a coal furnace. Staff and patrons used inkwells and fountain pens. A letter from the Library Director to the Library Board in 1926 announced that electric lights were finally installed! Until the Municipal Building was built in 1931, the Library had a spacious parking lot that stretched back to Herman Street.
The Library Board of Trustees, directors and staff grew with the community, and served their needs through World War I and World War II. In 1935, the Library staff started compiling a weekly community calendar for the newly formed Glen Ridge Paper. Summer reading programs for children started in the late 1930's. After the second war, the collections and services focused on the needs of returning veterans - housing, careers, and families. Up until the 1950's the Public Library also provided library service and maintained collections in the Borough schools.
In the late 1980's and early 1990's the addition of an elevator and the construction of a new wing provided space for growing collections on three floors and allowed for barrier free access to the Library and the Municipal Building. The three-story expansion, which opened in 1993, was funded almost entirely by donations from nine hundred private individuals.
In 2001 Glen Ridge Library joined the Bergen County Cooperative Library System (BCCLS), which is a consortium of over 70 public libraries in four counties. BCCLS membership provides Glen Ridge residents with access to over 5 million items in the online catalog, plus shared subscriptions to full-text magazine and newspaper databases, and many more services that Glen Ridge could not afford on its own. Most of the services are available to registered users 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through any Internet computer.
