George Dorr’s Acount of the Founding of the Jesup

The Jesup Memorial Library – as distinct from the village library, organized long before by members of the oldtime summer colony for the purpose of loaning out current books – had its origin as a thought in a collection of books on gardening I was gathering together to give the Bar Harbor Horticultural Society as a nucleus for a library.  I had been instrumental in founding the Society a few years before and it was doing excellent work in organizing flower shows, held at the Building of Arts, in holding meetings for discussion, arranging lectures and promoting generally good horticulture on the Island.

I had a number of valuable books, old and recent, which I was ready to turn over to the Society when it should have a place to keep them, means to care for them, and opportunity for their use.

These, I thought, a good library would provide.  The old library, known as the Village Library, furnished merely an opportunity, on paying a certain fee, for taking out books for summer reading of the lighter kind and it occurred to me that if a good site could be secured, the building would come later.

Looking the opportunity over, there was one site which seemed to me ideal, the one where today the Jesup Memorial Library now stands, opposite the churches and near the Village Green.  There was no building on the site and the price seemed reasonable.

The site in mind, the next step was to find someone to purchase it, to be held for the new library; and I wrote Mr Philip Livingston, whose wife had recently died, and who I thought might like to give the site in her memory.  This was in the early spring of 1909.  After several weeks I got an answer from Mr Livingston in Florence, Italy, telling me that I had been right in thinking he would like to establish some memorial at Bar Harbor for his wife but that he had already taken steps to do this in the purchase, in Florence, of a fountain for the Village Green.  The fountain arrived that spring, was unpacked in the town barn for the selectmen and ministers of the town to pass upon, it being surmounted by the figure of a naked boy; and, approved after much discussion, it was erected and is there. Toward the end of the following summer I again took up the matter of acquiring the site, to hold for a library, this time with Mrs Morris K. Jesup, whose husband, prominent in various activities in Bar Harbor – the Y.M.C.A., the V. I. A. and others – had died the year before, asking her to give in his memory the site of the future building.

The idea appealed to her and I bought the land that afternoon.  The land secured, Mrs. Jesup offered to build a library upon it in her husband’s memory, setting a limit of $20,000 on its cost. William Adams Delano of New York was sent for to make the plans.  Through the interest of Mrs John Markoe of Philadelphia to whom Mrs Jesup told her plans, William Adams Delano of New York was sent for to make the plans.(1) He stayed with Mrs Jesup, who told him what she wanted in material to give distinction to the building which was to be a memorial to her husband. I told him what I wanted for the town in space and arrangement, which was substantially what now exists in the ample reading room with central table lighted from above, in the quiet, windowed alcoves and in generous book stacks and wide balconies.

I asked for two spacious rooms, one on either side of the entrance from the street, the one on the right for horticultural room with special horticultural library; the one on the left, overlooked by the librarian’s desk, for children and a children’s library.

Ultimately the horticultural room before being devoted to its intended use, was taken over for art exhibition purposes to which it lends itself admirably; the children’s room has served its purpose well and is still doing so.

A feature I had thought of as favorable in the site was that it lent itself to building on two levels, the ground sloping rapidly toward the south and giving opportunity for a room beneath the reading room which, though pillared and low-studded, would stand out in the open with full light and sun and opportunity around it for a well-sheltered garden with separate entrance from the street.

This opportunity, however, was partly lost by the heavy stone-work for this basement which entered into the architect’s design, prepared in New York that fall, and the high small windows appropriate for that design.  But the reading room itself was all that could be asked, a delight to read in, with abundant lighting and quiet floors of cork.

After Mr Delano had spent a few days in Bar Harbor making preliminary studies he came to me and said:

“What Mrs Jesup wants in material and you for the Town in space and arrangement is going to cost more than Mrs Jesup has planned to give.  What shall I do?  Shall I cut in material or in space.

“Cut in neither,” I replied, “let Mrs Jesup do the cutting when she has seen your plans.”

When we met that autumn in Mr Delano’s office in New York, Mrs Jesup, Mr Delano and I, with the successful bidder on the plans as drawn, the bid amounted to seventy-seven thousand dollars and some hundreds, and Mrs Jesup signed the contract without questioning the amount.

Mrs Jesup asking me to look after the execution of the contract, I employed to supervise it one of the best building inspectors in the State Roscoe A. Eddy of Bar Harbor, a carpenter by trade, who later became contractor.  By the beginning of the following summer, that of 1911, the building was nearing completion and I took up with Mrs Jesup the question of endowment.  It had not occurred to her that an endowment would be needed, but since the building was to be a memorial, kept warm and lighted through the winter, others, I told her, could not be counted on to maintain it;  for that an endowment fund would be required.  The services of a librarian and the purchase of books and magazines could safely be left, I thought, to those using the library as the years went by.

In making this clear to Mrs Jesup I had a valuable ally in Mrs Hobson, of Washington, an old friend to both Mr and Mrs Jesup, to whom Mr Jesup had been a wise counsellor in time of need.  After considering the sum of ten thousand dollars for the endowment, Mrs Jesup finally decided to establish one of twenty-five thousand dollars, which still, I thought, would fail to meet the necessary upkeep costs.

Finally the day was at hand when the Library was to be dedicated.  Mr Thomas De Witt Cuyler, Mrs Jesup’s nephew, was to make the presentation and came on it from Philadelphia.  The Hon. Luere B. Deasy, later Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, accepted the gift to the public on behalf of the Town.

Two days before the ceremony I went to Mr Fred C. Lynam, who had been president of the Village Library, and asked him to make me an itemized estimate of what it would cost to maintain, appropriate to its memorial intent, the new library, leaving the salary of the librarian and the purchase of books to the passing generations;  and when Mr Cuyler came, I took the estimate to him.  It called for an income of twenty-five hundred a year, the interest on fifty thousand dollars.  That was in the afternoon before the ceremony.  The next morning Mrs Jesup handed him her check for twenty-five thousand dollars, for endowment, to be presented at the meeting.

Mr Cuyler asked: “Don’t you think that it would be better to complete the matter now and free your mind of it.”

 “Is it not enough? “ she inquired.

 And he replied:

 “No, Mr Dorr has given me an estimate of annual maintenance expense, drawn up by Mr Lynam, which calls for the interest on fifty thousand dollars.

Mrs  Jesup took back the check, tore it up and wrote another for fifty thousand dollars which Mr Cuyler presented in making the offer to the Town.

The meeting, held in the Reading Room of the completed Library, passed off with great distinction.  Judge Deasy’s speech of acceptance on the Town’s behalf was admirable and eloquent and the gift was received with enthusiasm and Mrs. Jesup was well content.

 (1) The repetition of “William Adams Delano of New York was sent for to make the plans” occurs in the original.

A LIBRARY EVOLVES