Gresham Library Special Reports, 1915-1919
by Gresham Branch of the Public Library Library Association of Portland 1915-1919
Gresham, Multnomah County, Oregon, United States
More about this item
- Identifier
- ghs20240010244
- Rights
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
- Location
- Gresham, Multnomah County, Oregon, United States
- Date
- 1915-1919
- Creator
- Gresham Branch of the Public Library Library Association of Portland
- Subject
- Gresham Library
- Libraries
- Librarians
- World War I
- Influenza
- Provenance
- The Gresham Branch Library dates to 1903, when Multnomah County passed a bond enabling rural post offices to receive and distribute books from the Portland Library. Postmistress Iona McColl, Gresham's first female postmaster, by default became the town's first librarian. Community members raised funds and secured a matching grant from the Andrew Carnegie foundation to open a dedicated library building in 1913. The Gresham Carnegie Library, an English Tudor Revival structure, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It was a fixture of the community and a popular gathering place for many years, as is evident in these reports. Gresham, rapidly urbanizing and expanding, had outgrown its small library by 1989, and the Multnomah County Library association began construction on a library "megabranch" a block away on Miller and 3rd Streets. Residents formed a "book brigade" to shuttle books from the old library to the new one as the opening date approached. Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt and U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield spoke at the new library's opening on January 7, 1990.
- Type
- Text
- Relation
- Gresham Heritage
- Item sets
- Gresham Heritage
