St. Louis Mercantile Library

In December 1845 a group of civic leaders and philanthropists joined to establish a membership library with the intent of creating a place "where young men could pass their evenings agreeably and profitably, and thus be protected from the temptations to folly that ever beset unguarded youth in large towns."[4] The library officially opened on April 19, 1846, and became chartered by the State of Missouri that year.[2] At the time, public libraries were not a standard institution. The St. Louis Mercantile Library, with a reading room, meeting rooms, book stacks, and the largest auditorium in the city, became a primary hub of cultural and intellectual interchange in the city in the years preceding commonplace public and academic libraries.[1]

James E. Yeatman was the first president. Yeatman would go on to be one of the founders of the Mercantile Bank as well as Washington University in St. Louis. By 1847 it had 1,600 volumes and 283 subscribing members. In 1851 it merged with the St. Louis Lyceum. The St. Louis Symphony played its first concerts in the library. A series of lectures were held in the auditorium, with noted speakers including Mark Twain, Carl Schurz, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oscar Wilde. [4]

Mercantile Library Hall, ca. 1870

In 1854 the library moved to a new building at 510 Locust Street, on the corner of Broadway and Locust streets. The structure included the 2,000 seat Grand Hall, the largest auditorium in the city at the time. The first session of the Missouri Constitutional Convention in 1861 met in the library voting to stay in the Union at the beginning of the American Civil War. Another constitutional convention in 1865 abolished slavery.[4]

In 1884 Robert S. Brookings began a campaign to build a new fireproof building. The older building was demolished in 1887 and a new cornerstone was laid by Henry Shaw (botanist). In 1889 the new six-story structure was dedicated on the same site. The new structure had no lecture hall, but did include an elevator. The library replaced candles in the stacks with electricity for the first time in 1901. Notable library programs included a telephone service and Book Delivery Service using a Ford Model T established in 1915. The Library received its designated status as a City Landmark in 1973.[4]

With the opening of the free St. Louis Public Library in 1893, the Mercantile Library's mission shifted from serving as the primary modern library of the city to focus on its major historic collections of books, papers, and art works.[2] The Art Museum has actively collected paintings, drawings, sculpture, and folk art of America since its foundation, tracing back to an early loan from noted St. Louis artist Charles Deas.[2]

The Mercantile Library historically collected materials to reflect the industrial history of St. Louis and the surrounding region. In this spirit, a dedicated railroad collection was established in 1983, named after John W. Barriger III, an American railroad executive whose large personal library of books, corporate papers, and photographs formed the core of the railroad holdings.[5] In 1985, the library established a formal waterways collection named after Herman T. Pott, a prominent river industry executive.[6]

The newspaper photo morgue and clipping files of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, established in 1854, moved to the library.[4]