On July 8, 1926, architect Horace Trumbauer
completed the last revisions to his design for the Free
Library's central building. Later that year, workers
put finishing touches on the enormous $7 million
structure. With the closing of the old central library at Thirteenth and Locust
Streets on October 30, 1926, preparations began for the colossal move into
the new building. On January 20, 1927, teams of movers transported the first
books from the old building, as well as other storage facilities throughout the
city, to the newly finished building on Logan Circle. Throughout the winter and
into the spring, Head Librarian John Ashhurst oversaw the enormous task of
packing, transporting, unpacking, and shelving the library's numerous
collections as well as records, furnishings, and other material. By May 25,
when library officials hosted a preview tour of the new building for local
dignitaries, the move was complete. The press applauded the beauty and utility
of the majestic new library building, which, contemplated for more than thirty
years, had taken fifteen to construct.
On June 2, 1927, librarians and trustees officially
opened the Free Library Central building with a
dignified ceremony on the lawn along the Fairmount
Parkway. While the Police and Firemen's bands
played and newsreel cameras rolled, Mayor W.
Freeland Kendrick, City Council president Charles
B. Hall, and other dignitaries including former U. S.
Senator George Wharton Pepper, a descendant of the library's founder,
praised the new building and the many people who had devoted years and, in
some cases, decades to its erection. Capping the ceremony, which was
broadcast live on the radio, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, the chair of the
Committee on Main Library Site and Building, presented the keys to the
building to Board of Trustees president Cyrus Adler, who, in turn, passed
them to Head Librarian John Ashhurst. After the head librarian took
possession of the building, he threw open the front doors and thousands of
Philadelphians pressed into the entrance hall and up the great staircase to
inspect their imposing new library building. Throughout the rest of the day and
well into the night, awestruck visitors marveled at the structure, one of the
most spacious and dignified in the country. All agreed that the new Central Library would quickly repay the tremendous effort and
expenditure required to erect it.
