Waterbury Town Library

Waterbury, Vermont

From the book "Where The Books Are"

Written by Patricia W. Belding,

Potash Book Publishing

Histories of Other Libraries In & Around Central Vermont

The Waterbury Town Library, one of two in town, has been housed in a converted school in Waterbury Center since 1916. The Free Will Baptist Society built the Greek/Italianate seminary in the mid-1800s. The library, occupying a classroom in this tall red-clapboard building located off VT Route 100, has been closely associated with the library in the Village.

The history of the town library began at the 1905 March meeting when, under the law of 1894, the town appropriated $100--a generous amount at that time--to establish a library. Books were purchased the following summer, to be added to the state's $100-donation of books. The 17-year-old Waterbury Public library Association agreed to oversee the small collection in a bookcase in rooms rented from L.P. Mussey.

For several years, the Village library sent books back and forth on the Mount Mansfield Electric Railroad to a branch of the town library housed in the Waterbury Center post office. In 1916, after the Village library took over the Janes home, the town moved its books to the seminary building erected in 1869.

This historic school costing about $30,000 was built of wood harvested from nearby forests and had a foundation of redstone from Starksboro. It has tall thin windows, corner quoins, and brackets and is a fine (and rare) example of the seminaries built in Vermont over a century ago.

There had been a lyceum and a library on the second floor when Elizabeth Colley took over as headmistress in 1878, and in 1925, these books became part of the town collection. In 1913, seven years after the seminary's 1906 closing, the building was deeded to the town to be used as a school.

From the year the library moved into the building until Winona Hoffman took over in 1950, there were at least four librarians. Improvements were made and Alice Post helped Hoffman catalog the books. Once located on the second floor, the library was moved to the empty first-floor classroom when the elementary grades left the building in 1966, the year the Harwood Union High School was built.

Pauline Sayah, who became librarian in 1964, was followed by her daughter-in-law Susan. The large windows provide ample light for the busy one-room library, open 16 hours a week. In 1992, when the comment was made that those same windows must let in a lot of light, Susan Sayah replied, "They do, but the sun pours in during the summer and the wind whistles through in winter."