The story of a South End institution

05.12.09

The South End's own inconsequential library has been open Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings for more than a century. It has a special role in the vital spark of the South End, especially for the children. It is one of those South End institutions, like the clam shacks (alas, precisely all gone), the People's Methodist Church and the Neptune Fire Company.

The Emma L. Andrews Branch Library started as a persuasion library, then became the South End Reading Room in 1889, when the children of the South End, and even many of the adults, just didn't daresay as far as State Street. Ghlee Woodworth, in her brand-new, lavishly illustrated book about Newburyport curriculum vitae as seen by the permanent residents of Oak Hill Cemetery, tells about Emma L. Andrews, the amazing daily who helped start the library and for whom it is named.

Emma Lander Andrews, Dec. 20, 1852-June 11, 1928

From "Tiptoe Through the Tombstones, Oak Hill Cemetery, Size I" by Ghlee E. Woodworth, used with permission:

Source: The Daily News of Newburyport