Mission:
The Rogers Memorial Library is dedicated to inspire and serve the educational, cultural and lifelong learning needs of the communities of the Southampton and Tuckahoe School Districts by providing information, materials, programs and state of the art services to all visitors.
History:
The founding of Rogers Memorial Library in 1893 was made possible due to a bequest made by Harriet Jones Rogers, upon her death in 1892. With generosity and foresight, Ms. Rogers left a piece of land, as well as $10,000, to be used for the construction of a library to be dedicated to her mother, Clarissa Rogers. The library's first home, a Victorian Gothic building on the corner of Job's Lane and Main Street, was designed by R.H. Robertson, built in 1895, and opened to the public in March, 1896.
The original building had a hall that could hold 250 people, the capacity for 20,000 books, and an upstairs apartment for the caretaker. One of the original gifts of books was donated by William Pelletreau, in memory of his mother, Elizabeth Helen Pelletreau. This special collection consisted of approximately 400 books of "a permanently valuable and useful nature," together with a bookcase.
Less than 20 years after its opening, the library's collection began to outgrow the original building. Grosvenor Atterbury designed an addition to the library, which was completed in 1915. By 1916, the number of books drawn daily averaged 100 titles.
As of October 1971, the library contained 26,000 volumes. A new room was created upstairs for meetings and book storage. In 1976, Lyn Ashe was named director of the library, a position she held for 25 years. By the early 1980s, it was clear that the library had once again outgrown its space and talk of expanding or moving began.
The library remained in its original building throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while discussion of location, land, use of the Cooper House and other relocation logistics were sorted out. Just over 100 years after the creation of the Rogers Memorial Library, on November 3, 2000, the New Rogers Memorial Library, designed by the architectural firm of Beatty, Harvey and Associates, opened at its new location at 91 Coopers Farm Road. Shortly after Lyn Ashe saw the library relocated to its present location, Debra Engelhardt became the library’s new director, followed by Elizabeth Burns in 2009. The main library and Cooper Hall encompass 26,500 square feet, serve from 12,000 to 40,000 people year round and, in 2008, circulated 244,906 items.
