BARBARA MULHERN

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COOPERSTOWN CHRONICLES


Editor’s Note: During the Monday, June 30, press conference announcing a $100,000 state grant to help restore 22 Main, Mayor Carol B. Waller praised Barbara
Mulhern’s historical findings. Here are excerpts from her report.

Cooperstown’s Village Library Building at 22 Main St. is located in the center of some of the village’s historical and architectural treasures. Directly across the street is the former Otsego County Bank, built in 1831 in the Greek Revival style. It is thought that its stone structure and columns were the architectural inspiration for the library building.
For many years the two parcels of land at 20 and 22 Main held shops and taverns, the last of which burned as an aftermath of the Great Fire of 1862. The 1868 atlas shows the area as one large lot.
Soon thereafter a syndicate called the Otsego Lake Building Association began construction of a large hotel on the site. The hotel was never finished and stood in its unfinished state for almost 20 years, until 1889, when Alfred Corning Clark bought the property and had the structure demolished and the lot cleared.
In April 1897, construction of the present structure was begun. The Clarks had chosen Ernest Flagg (1857-1947) of New York City as the building’s architect. Flagg had studied architecture at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and designed St. Luke’s Hospital on Morningside Drive. He later went on to design the 45-story Singer Building, Scribner’s bookstore on Fifth Avenue, and the chapel and Bancroft Hall at the Naval Academy.
In August 1898, “the new stone building erected by the Clark family at the corner of Main and Fair streets to be used as a YMCA, library and museum, was formally opened with a ball given by Mrs. Alfred Corning Clark for her son, Mr. Robert Sterling Clark, who had lately reached his twenty-first birthday. Parlati’s orchestra of Albany furnished the music and the supper was served by Sherry of New York.”
This building was officially called the Village Club and Library and its original primary function was as a men’s club. The YMCA moved there from its temporary quarters in the bank building across the street.
The library was in the big room on the right. The room on the left was used for pool and billiards. Directly behind that was a card room and the office of the manager. Dinners and banquets were held frequently in the ballroom upstairs.
The Village Club’s affiliation with the YMCA ended in 1911. Apparently there was still interest in athletics at the Club because
two squash courts were built behind the main building in 1914.
In 1939, the “members of the Village Club voted to dissolve the organization and accept an invitation from the Alfred Corning Clark Gymnasium to use facilities there, including a new lounge and reading room being fitted out at the gymnasium.”
According to the early records, there was a library in Cooperstown as early as 1797. There are sporadic mentions of a library in the intervening years, but the true beginning was after the move into the building at 22 Main in 1898. The library was an integral part of the Village Club until
1932, when Robert Sterling Clark gave the building to the Village.
“The next year the Women’s Club of Cooperstown appointed a standing committee
to support the library, and in l939, assumed total responsibility for its operation.”
In 1949 the Village took over the Library’s operation and it became an officially licensed public library for the residents of Cooperstown and students of the Cooperstown Central School.
In 1964, the Library joined Broome, Chenango and Delaware counties to form the Four County Library system, which permitted the present coordinated cataloging,
book ordering and interlibrary loan services.
In 1974, the Library took over the rooms on the west side of the main building for its children’s room, director’s office and a reading room. Books on tape and CDs, DVDs, and computer access are now available. A volunteer organization, the Friends of the Library, operates an annual book sale, which raises money to provide ancillary services as well as to furnish and maintain the entire library area.

Labels: Barbara Mulhern, Columns, COOPERSTOWN CHRONICLES, Opinion