10 South Batavia Avenue
The Batavia Public Library traces its roots back to just after the Civil War, when it was founded as a library association, in 1868. Members paid a one-time fee and an annual tax to have access to the volumes that the fees were used to purchase. Within 5 years, nearly 400 books had been acquired, and a full-time librarian had been hired. At the turn of the 20th century, the library had grown substantially and had been moved three times. It found its first home in a property dedicated for library use only in 1902, when Mrs. Don Carlos Newton donated her family homestead, located at One North Batavia Avenue, to be the new library. It remained there until 1921, when the building was razed to make way for the extension of Wilson Street, Batavia’s main east-west thoroughfare. A new library building was constructed on the Newton property, and served as the library for the next 60 years.
The library tended to keep its librarians for a long time. By 1973, the library’s 100th anniversary, there had been only four librarians! In 1981, a new, modern building was built to house the library on the corner of Wilson and Lincoln Avenue. The expansion allowed for a new era of services and holdings to be offered to the community. Batavia’s rapid growth over the past 30 years required a new, much larger building — and the library built in 1981 was replaced in 2002, with a 54,000-square-foot facility that houses the 126,000 items, including books, A/V materials, computer software and more.
