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Community Corner

Literacy and libations: one story of Healdsburg's public library

Sobriety and scholarship were often at odds in Healdsburg's early days, and the history of the library offers ironic insight

This week, the will again hold a starting on Wednesday, March 16. These periodic events offer library members and other book lovers the chance to purchase books, CDs, magazines and more of popular as well as esoteric titles – and the profits go to the library.

If this weekend’s sale is similar to previous ones, among the most sought-after books will be old, new, rare and popular books about wine, obviously one of the cornerstones of Healdsburg’s cultural life and economy. (Last year I picked up a near-new copy of “The Grapes of Ralph,” a large format, heavily illustrated account of a journey through France’s wine regions by hallucinatory artist Ralph Steadman.)

Our library at Center and Piper opened at that location in November 1988. But the history of libraries in Healdsburg is far older, dating back at least a century earlier – back to the days when the streets were dusty, the wood frame houses were built by hand, and the town’s founders were beginning to plan for the future we live in. And, according to the archetypal old-timer, there was a saloon on every corner.

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Healdsburg’s first “library,” aside from any private book collections the earliest settlers had, was apparently at the Russian River Institute, an early institute of learning co-founded in 1857 by Roderick Matheson and others. Born in Iverness, Scotland, Matheson was “a well-educated and highly literate Boston school teacher,” according to the fall 1988 issue of the Historical Society's Russian River Recorder from where much of this account is derived.

Within a couple years, Matheson closed and then reopened the institute as the Agricultural and Mechanical University of California, located on what is now University and Tucker streets. (Hence, obviously, the grandiose name of the town-transecting avenue.) Its doors opened in November 1859 – 10 years before the University of California opened its first campus in Oakland.

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In many ways, Matheson was the perfect person to promote literacy in this new town. As well as a teacher and landowner, he was politically savvy, having been appointed a city comptroller in San Francisco among other roles. He also was an extensive landholder, owning about 90 acres south of Powell, including today’s . Matheson died in the Civil War in 1862, a colonel of the First California Regiment. In tribute, the road known till then as South Street became  Matheson Street.

During the decade that followed, the Sotoyome Literary Society and others joined forces to, among other things, debate issues of the day and foster the love of books. The end result was the first Public Library Association in Healdsburg, entrusted by the Masonic Lodge, established in 1869. The books from the Russian River Institute and the Sotoyome Literary Society were purchased and turned over to the new town library on the second floor of the Masonic Lodge on Center Street.

Over the next few years this library was closed and reopened several times. The local newspaper the Enterprise blamed the failure on mismanagement by “unfit” and “uninterested” businessmen, but also criticized the stern librarian who made the place cold, inhospitable and basically uninviting – which “made the barroom look inviting by comparison,” according to the Recorder.

Women in the literary societies were less than pleased with this characterization, and although records are scant the next library in town was probably that of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union reading room.

In a related move, the former Russian River Institute on University Stteet, now the Sotoyome Institute, was closed and reopened by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The rise of temperance seemed to parallel the rise of interest in a library, and there was often drawn an opposition between the saloons and the library.

The false starts and controversy ended with the opening of a Public Reading Room in the new City Hall in 1889, with its collection based on the WCTU holdings. The ambitious city hall was built for a town larger than Healdsburg was at the time, and the public use of a reading room was lauded by the local press. The new did what it could to help, raising $100 for a 30-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and other reference works.

If none of the earlier  attempts to start a library endured, this one did. Still, the association with the WCTU rankled many locals, and in 1896 the city itself took over the library.

By 1900, there were 1575 books in the library, with a monthly circulation of 417. By the end of that decade the circulation had jumped to 1075 books per month, and 80 people visited the library daily. Did temperance have something to do with it?

According to the article in the Recorder, “the Public Library had become a symbol of sobriety to many. In 1908 a prominent citizen proclaimed that Healdsburg was waking up to the necessity of ridding itself of the ‘saloons and gambling dens which disgrace it in the eyes of all decent people.’ A library… promotes mental and moral culture.”

It was time for a new library, and in 1909 Andrew Carnegie – like Matheson, born in Scotland who rose to success in the U.S. – granted Healdsburg’s request for a $10,000 grant to build a new library. This was to become the stately building at Fitch and Matheson that now houses the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society, .

For almost 80 years, the Carnegie building housed the public library, first administered by the city until, in the mid-1970s, it was absorbed into the county library system. Photos of the reading room (now the museum’s exhibition hall) show a quiet, studious, book-lined hall that must have promoted that “mental and moral culture” necessary for the town’s slow but steady growth.

When it opened in its present location, the was able to greatly expand its holdings and public area, and now it’s a center of cultural activities and interests.

Ironically, the building is also the home of the Sonoma County Wine Library, with over 5000 books on wine and related subjects alone. Occasionally, the Wine Library also sponsors that include, if not promote, the healthy and cultural benefits of wine.

Thus sobriety and scholarship come full circle, united in a single building at your local public library.

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