Libraries in United States

Founded by act of Congress signed by John Adams, burned by the British in 1814, and rebuilt partly with Thomas Jeffersons library ...

Created in 1895 from the Astor and Lenox libraries and the Tilden trust, NYPL runs 92 locations serving millions of New Yorkers. T...

The first large free municipal library in the United States, founded by an 1848 act of the state legislature and opened in 1854, t...

Founded in 1873, two years after the Great Fire destroyed the citys book stocks, the Chicago Public Library grew out of donations ...

Serving one of the largest populations of any US public library system from its 1926 Goodhue Central Library, whose pyramid tower ...

Seattles library system, founded in 1890, became world famous with the 2004 Central Library designed by OMA and Rem Koolhaas. The ...

The oldest library system in the United States began in 1638 with the bequest of about 400 books from the young minister John Harv...

Yales collection began with some 40 books in 1701 and has grown to roughly 15 million volumes across more than a dozen libraries. ...

A marble box on the Yale campus, Gordon Bunshafts 1963 design filters daylight through translucent Vermont marble panels that glow...

Firestone Library, opened in 1948 as the first large American university library built after World War Two with open stacks, ancho...

Columbias library dates to the founding of Kings College in 1754 and now totals more than 13 million volumes. Butler Library, the ...

Opened with the new university in 1891, the Chicago system holds about 12 million volumes. Regenstein Library of 1970 was among th...

Michigan began collecting in 1838 and now preserves more than 13 million volumes. The Hatcher Graduate Library and the adjacent Sh...

Founded with the university in 1868, the Berkeley library system holds over 12 million volumes. Doe Library of 1911 opens onto the...

Stanfords libraries began with the university in 1891 and now hold millions of items centered on Cecil H. Green Library. Special s...

The first presidential library, conceived and partly paid for by Franklin Roosevelt himself, was dedicated at his Hudson Valley ho...

Designed by I. M. Pei and dedicated in 1979 on Columbia Point overlooking Boston Harbor, the Kennedy Library combines a stark conc...

The largest and most visited of the presidential libraries, the Reagan Library occupies a hilltop in Simi Valley, California. A gl...

Opened in 2004 in Springfield, where Lincoln lived and practiced law for nearly twenty years, the institution combines a research ...

Established in 1934 to care for the records of the federal government, the National Archives displays the Declaration of Independe...

Founded on the bequest of Chicago merchant Walter L. Newberry, this independent research library opened in 1887 for the study of t...

Railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington assembled one of the great collections of Anglo American civilization and endowed it with his...

Charles Follen McKim built the 1906 palazzo for Pierpont Morgans library, with frescoed ceilings and triple tiered bookcases of ra...

Henry Clay Folger spent decades collecting Shakespeare, amassing 82 copies of the 1623 First Folio, about a third of all known cop...

Run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and founded in 1894, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is the la...

Benjamin Franklin and fifty members of his Junto club founded this subscription library in 1731, pooling funds to buy books for sh...

One of the oldest independent libraries in the United States, the Athenaeum was founded in 1807 by a group of Boston intellectuals...

Chartered in 1891 and funded by a bequest from George S. Pepper, the Free Library opened its Beaux-Arts Parkway Central building o...

Founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 1957, the Harry Ransom Center grew into one of the great literary and cultural arc...

The first presidential library created under the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955 was dedicated in 1957 in Independence, Missour...

Founded in 1812 by printer and patriot Isaiah Thomas, the American Antiquarian Society is the oldest historical society in the Uni...

Founded in 1747 with a gift from merchant Abraham Redwood to buy books, this is the oldest community library in the United States ...