History

Manchester Library Nomination ~ Heart of the Community

The Manchester Library’s history is really the story of the people in our small community. From the beginning settlers believed that a local library would be vital to the well being of the community and they were willing to put those beliefs into action. Our story has many vibrant threads woven together into the fabric of time and community.

Manchester is nestled on the shores of the great Puget Sound. It is a place where everyone knows his neighbor, a place where community responsibility is valued. Its roots go deep into the past, beginning on October 10, 1871 when Washington was still a territory and steamer ships were calling.

The library began with a single citizen’s belief that a strong community needed a library. That citizen was Mary J. Sanford, who owned the local Manchester Shopping Mart and was a member of the county’s rural library board. She donated a corner of her business to be the “library”, and organized the first library committee, which took responsibility for volunteer staff, furnishings, heat, and light. The Manchester Library opened for business on July 1, 1947. Money was raised by collecting donations, giving round-robin parties in which each guest donated 25 cents, and passing “market baskets” from house to house for neighbors to donate baked goods, jam or other foods. Each neighbor could then take out what he or she wished from the basket with a donation to the library fund.

By 1948 the Kitsap County Rural Library was providing books and the operation moved into a slightly renovated donated chicken coop! In 1953 the chicken coop was torn down and the library moved temporarily into the Manchester Improvement Club building. The following year a 16’ by 24’ modular building was constructed on Port of Manchester property, all completed with donations of money, materials and labor from the local citizens. The library had found a real “home”, which lasted for twenty-six years. In 1976 the newly re-chartered Friends of the Manchester Library became a registered nonprofit organization, decided to build a permanent building and applied for a loan from the Farmer’s Home Administration. The FmHA was skeptical that a community group could repay a loan with fund-raising as its only source of income, but in the end granted the loan. It was the first of its kind for a library. With a library grant (from the Kitsap County Library), donations, and many hours of volunteer construction, the building was completed in 1980. The FmHA loan was paid off in 1986, thirty-four years early! In 1994 a county grant helped pay for an addition that expanded the library’s space and provided a community meeting room.

The Manchester Library is now part of the Kitsap Regional Library System and offers the wonders of technology, sporting a WiFi connection, ebooks, Internet stations and an electronic catalog with 19,000 electronic format journals and dozens of electronic resources. The library is open five days a week, has weekly children’s story times, three book discussion clubs, and the meeting room is filled with citizens who can rent it for an economical fee.

In the end it is our library that proudly represents our communities volunteerism and sense of community. It is our library, which the people have rallied around for decades and it is our library that is central to the feeling of community. It is the living heart of our community.