A brief history
of the library and the building
The building was completed in 1805, built for the Lincoln and
Kennebec Bank under a Massachusetts Charter of 1802. In the Northwest corner of
the basement was a ”Jug Vault”, a brick structure said to have resembled a
large bean pot, the top of which was entered through a trap door in the floor of
the room above. In it was kept the required reserves of $100,000 in specie.
For some years the second floor was leased to the County for
offices of the Clerk of Courts, the Registry of Probate, and the Registry of
Deeds. Records were kept there until 1862 when Mr. Isaac T. Hobson converted the
building to a private residence. He added a Mansard roof in 1870. The present
roof, designed by W. Stanley Parker, was put on in 1936. The wooden ell, once
the Children’s Room, was added during Hobson family residency. The new wing,
which houses the Children’s Room and the non-fiction collection, was added in
1981.
A succession of several families lived here until 1929 when
the building was purchased by a committee of generous donors for use by the
library.
The Wiscasset Public Library was incorporated in 1920 by a group of ten
Incorporators. It was first established in the Methodist Church on Fort Hill in
the winter of 1921, with Mrs. Henry W. Webb as Librarian. It remained there
until 1929 when it was removed to its present location. It is, in a sense, the
successor to the Wiscasset Social Library that was started in 1799 and was more
or less active through the 1800s.
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