  It
all goes back to Irving Grinnell.
Born in 1839 into a prosperous New York
City family, he retired young to lead the life of a gentleman
of leisure on his estate, Netherwood, located in what is now Bowdoin
Park.
Grinnell took a Victorian philanthropist's interest in Wappingers
Falls, aided and abetted by his friend, the assistant minister
of Zion Church, Henry Yates Satterlee. Satterlee, who came to
Wappingers in 1865, left the area in 1881 and went on to become
the bishop of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC in 1896.
During his time in Wappingers he was instrumental in several "village
improvement" projects, one of which was the establishment
of a library.
In 1867, the two men established a Circulating Library and Reading
Room at the corner of Market and East Main Streets. They charged
a dollar a year for membership, and hired a local widow, Elizabeth
Howarth, to take care of the books and clean the rooms. By 1880
the library was outgrowing its space and was in perpetual need
of funds. A building fund was started, but it didn't take off
until 1884 when Grinnell held a Lawn Party and a Union Fair was
held at Zion Church, both in aid of the library. The lot at the
corner of East Main and Spring Streets was purchased in 1886;
construction began and was completed in 1887.
Grinnell hired a New York City architect, and supplied a list
of architectural features he wanted to include. The tower is modeled
after one he saw in St. Battenberg, Switzerland, and the way the
second story overhangs the first recalls buildings he liked in
Chester, England.
Grinnell Library was chartered as an association library in 1888,
making it the oldest in the state.
The library was in what is now the upstairs reading room, with
an entrance by way of the winding staircase in the turret. The
main room below it was rented, first to a jewelry store and later
(after 1926) to a clothing store. The store's door was in the
middle, still marked by the stone arch. At the western end of
the building, a second entrance led to a rental apartment upstairs,
and the offices of the local newspaper, The Wappingers Chronicle,
downstairs. The Chronicle also rented the basement
for their printing plant. The building was lit by gas until 1912,
when it was electrified. A photograph taken before a hot-water
heating system was installed in 1923 shows a wood-burning stove
piped into the eastern chimney.
Grinnell died in 1921 and in his will created an endowment fund
for the library.
In 1923 the collection was recatalogued and classified. A representative
came from the state Board of Education and analyzed the collection,
removing about 2000 books on the grounds that they were out of
date, in bad shape, or "containing no literary merit".
One of the apartments, which had fallen vacant, was converted
into a children's room and furnished by the Reese family.
In 1924 the library became a "Free Library" under state
law.
The library was a hundred years old in 1967, and to celebrate,
the library took over the remainder of the building and installed
carpeting and air conditioning as well as bookshelves and other
furniture. At this point the Clapp paintings were collected, restored,
and hung throughout the building. The upstairs reading room was
named in honor of Margaret Mesier Reese and the room now used
for a storytelling room was refurbished by the Kiwanis Club for
use as a meeting room. What is now the director's office was a
"Music and Arts Room".
In the next decade, the library expanded again when the Aldrich
addition was built. This comprised what are now the children's
rooms upstairs, the reference room downstairs, and the community
meeting room in the basement, more than doubling the previous
floor space.
With the coming of computers, it was necessary to rearrange again,
shoe-horning the public computers into the reference area-which
makes sense since increasingly the Internet is a research sourse-and
the computer classroom into the children's room.
The Architect
The Grinnell Library building was designed by Henry M. Congdon
(1834-1922). Congdon was primarily an ecclesiastical architect
educated at Columbia University. He apprenticed to John Priest,
a church architect from Newburgh, New York.
Congdon worked in the high styles of Gothic Revival and Romanesque.
Grinnell Library, however, was designed in the manner of the architectural
school termed Picturesque. This has been attributed to Congdon's
great influence from H.H. Richardson, a well-known church architect
who worked in both Romanesque and Picturesque styles.
The term best describing Grinnell is Shingle Style. A subset
of the Picturesque (the style associated with Newburgh native
son Andrew Jackson Downing), Shingle style was an outgrowth of
the Queen Anne style, but is a combination of several later 19th
century styles, such as Stick style.
All these styles were used in public buildings of the era. A
building intended to benefit the working class of Wappingers Falls,
provide space for other businesses, and represent the Grinnell
family in the public eye would naturally be designed in the most
impressive style possible.
Based on Sandra D. Jobson, Architectural and Cultural Significance
of the Grinnell Library.
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