Bennett Public Library

The Bennett Public Library is the small brick Victorian Gothic building with a rose window and a slender spire on the west side of Concord Road, facing the Common between the Old Providence House and the First Parish church. It was built in 1880 and 1881 as Billerica's first library building, the gift of Eleanor Bennett, the widow of Joshua Bennett, and it housed the town's library for a hundred years, until the collection moved to a new town library at 25 Concord Road in April 1980. The building still belongs to the private Bennett Public Library Association, which has used it since then as a cultural center and hall.

Billerica had a Social Library as early as 1772 and a second social library incorporated in 1807. By the 1870s what remained of them belonged to the First Parish and to a Ladies' Sewing Society and was kept, as Henry A. Hazen wrote, "practically united, in a room of the First Church, in the care of Miss Sarah Annable," who counted seven hundred volumes in 1876. "It had long been felt that the provision for the needs of the town in this respect was inadequate; and in 1880 the generous munificence of Mrs. Joshua Bennett laid the foundation for their better supply." When the town meeting declined her offer of a library, Mrs. Bennett and other citizens formed the Bennett Public Library Association, a private corporation organized on July 27, 1880, with former Governor Thomas Talbot among its incorporators. The library was given, in the words of the county history, "in honor of her husband."

The land came from the front of the Bowers homestead, the house lot north of the meeting house that Capt. William Bowers bought in 1784 and his son Dr. William Bowers left to his widow and daughters. The last of the daughters left their shares to the Baptist church and to the town for the poor, and in 1871 the Baptist society and the town sold the homestead, an acre and three quarters "with a house and barn thereon," to William H. Osborn of New York; Hazen in 1883 called the Bowers house "Mrs. Osborn's house." By a deed of September 8, 1880 Osborn and his wife Virginia R. Osborn gave the Association for one dollar a lot on Main Street at the First Parish land, 50 feet on the street and about 137 feet deep, "with the provision that if a Library building is not built and a public library sustained upon said tract to the exclusion of all buildings for other purposes, said tract of land is to revert back to original owner." On May 4, 1881 the First Congregational Parish leased the Association for ninety-nine years the small triangle south of the lot, twenty-three feet on the street, asking no rent but "the use and the valuable consideration this Library is to said Parish." That triangle was part of the half acre the town had bought from Reuben Duren in 1797 for its meetinghouse, and on March 17, 1930 the town released it to the Association outright.

The building was designed by the young Boston firm of Rotch and Tilden, the work of George T. Tilden; the contractor was Valentine L. Wilson of Lowell and the brickwork was laid by Wilder Bennett, a mason of Pepperell. Mrs. Bennett paid for it, at a cost of about $9,000. Hazen described it soon after it opened: "The building contains a library, with capacity for ten or twelve thousand volumes, which may be doubled by the use of alcoves; a reading-room, a committee-room, and a handsome entrance hall and cloak-room. The reading-room is ornamented with a wide fireplace and beautiful mantel of unique design, contributed by William W. Warren, Esq., and the front of the building is enriched by a fine rose-window, the gift of Mr. Joshua Holden." Her daughters, Mrs. George Holden and Mrs. Warren, gave $2,000 for furnishings and books, and the old parish and sewing-society books passed to the new library with Miss Annable. The walls are red brick banded with black, with Nova Scotia freestone trim and a plaque in the front gable reading "Bennett Library Founded 1880." The library was dedicated on October 24, 1881.

At first readers paid a membership fee, or one dollar a year for the use of the books, but by the 1890s the library was free to all residents. Mrs. Bennett added an endowment fund in 1887 and died at her home on Boston Road on May 6, 1891, and the same year Winthrop Faulkner left the town $1,000 whose income was to buy books for the library. When the Billerica Historical Society was founded in 1894, Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Holden had "the Bennett Library Building enlarged so as to furnish suitable accommodations for the use of the Society and a safe receptacle for the preservation of articles," and the rear of the building was extended to the west. In 1923 the Society sealed a chest of papers in its room in the library, to be opened on October 27, 2023. From 1921 the town gave the Association a yearly appropriation, at first $500, while the Association's own directors ran the library. It opened a branch at Pinehurst in 1937 and another at North Billerica in 1951, and a bequest of $5,000 from Congressman George Holden Tinkham, Mrs. Bennett's great-grandson, paid for a mezzanine in the 1950s. In 1973 the Association bought a bookmobile to reach the growing outer neighborhoods.

By 1970 the building was far too small for the town, and a Library Building Committee created by the town meeting in 1969 spent a decade on a new municipal library. On April 19, 1980 more than 300 residents formed "a 1000 yard long human chain" down Concord Road and passed the "belongings of the century old Bennett Library" to the new building at 25 Concord Road, and the staff became town employees. The Association kept the old building. It became the Bennett Cultural Center, with classes, plays, exhibits and meetings; the Billerica Museum Committee leased it for its exhibits in 2003 and 2004, while the Howe School was being restored, and students of the Shawsheen Valley Technical High School built a deck and ramp at the rear in 2004. The steeple was repaired in 1999, and in the early 2000s the interior was refitted as a hall that could be rented for functions. In 2020 the assessors made the property taxable after the Association failed to file its exemption form. A fire in the fall of 2025 closed the building, and in May 2026 the town meeting voted $45,000 of Community Preservation funds to begin its restoration. It is a contributing building of the Billerica Town Common District, listed in the National Register in 1973, and lies in the local historic district of 1990.

References

1. MACRIS BIL.2
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), pp. 315-316: the social libraries, Mrs. Joshua Bennett's library building of 1880, its rooms, the Warren mantel and the Holden rose window, the lot given by William H. Osborn
3. Billerica town report 1895: report of the Billerica Historical Society; the Bennett Library building enlarged by Mrs. William W. Warren and Mrs. George Holden for the Society
4. Billerica town reports 1920-1924: Article 12 of 1921, $500 to aid the Bennett Public Library; the 1923 Association report; the Historical Society chest sealed in its room in 1923
5. Billerica town reports 1925-1929: 1929-1930 warrant Articles 58 and 59, releases of the First Parish lot and the library triangle
6. Billerica town report 1980: the human chain of April 19, 1980 that moved the Bennett Library to the new Billerica Public Library
7. Billerica town report 2003: Billerica Museum Committee exhibits at the Bennett Library, leased as a temporary home until the Howe School restoration
8. Billerica Public Library, Library History: Town Meeting declined Mrs. Bennett's gift and a private corporation was formed; the Bennett building served the town for 100 years
9. Billerica Public Library (Wikipedia): the Bennett Library of 1880 by Rotch and Tilden, cost $9,000 (Nourse 1899)
10. Billerica assessors, 3 Concord Rd (51-8-0): Bennett Public Library Assn, 0.219 acre, library built about 1880, current deed Book 787 Page 93

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.