{"id":1238,"date":"2018-11-30T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T06:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=1238"},"modified":"2020-02-20T16:28:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T16:28:23","slug":"park-building-a-seat-of-learning-and-former-home-to-the-citys-central-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=1238","title":{"rendered":"Park Building: A seat of learning and former home to the city\u2019s central library"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this blog, part of a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, reveals that Park Building, location for History\u2019s Open Days, was once home to the city\u2019s central library. Rob\u2019s research focuses on society\u2019s leisure practices, and he teaches a number of units that focus on one of the most popular leisure pursuits of the first half of the twentieth century, going to the cinema.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Portsmouth\u2019s first public library didn\u2019t open until 1883, much later than most other sizeable cities in England. Indeed, the country\u2019s first public library was opened over thirty years earlier, in Manchester in September 1852. Over the next few years many major towns and cities followed Manchester\u2019s lead and opened public libraries to serve the country\u2019s growing number of readers.<\/p>\n

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Manchester Public Library<\/p><\/div>\n

When I first started researching the country\u2019s public library history I was somewhat surprised to see that Portsmouth was so late in getting in on the act. There appears to have been an initial reluctance among the city\u2019s civic elites in setting up a free library service, with the local newspaper reporting in 1944 that \u2018in the early days of the [free library] movement Portsmouth was not \u201clibrary conscious\u201d.\u2019 [1] Apparently, opposition towards a public library service came from the city\u2019s ratepayers who \u2018opposed all attempts by the Borough Council to inaugurate a library service\u2019. [2] That opposition was \u2018gradually worn down\u2019, and after the first public library proved to be a well-liked and much-visited amenity, Portsmouth\u2019s civic leaders embarked upon providing branch libraries in many other areas of the city.<\/p>\n

Such was the popularity of the first library that the Council soon had to look for an alternative location in which to accommodate all of its visitors (as well as the thousands of books it needed to house). Portsmouth \u2018central\u2019 library has, therefore, had a number of homes, but since 1890 it has been located at the heart of the city\u2019s civic centre. Between 1890 and 1907 the library was located in the New Town Hall (site of the current Guildhall). After that it was housed in Park Building, which was also home to the city\u2019s Municipal College. The library is currently located in Guildhall Square, next to the Civic Offices and just a stone\u2019s throw away from the Guildhall.<\/p>\n

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Park Building, Portsmouth<\/p><\/div>\n

Continuing the long history of education on that site, Park Building is now home to the University and the venue for our Faculty\u2019s Open Days. So, when you\u2019re next in the building \u2013 as a visitor at an Open Day or as a current student \u2013 try to imagine it filled with books and bustling with avid population of readers from across the city!<\/p>\n

To read more on public libraries in Britain, see the previous blogs by Rob James on this site: ‘Libraries as community hubs’<\/a>,\u00a0‘Read for Victory<\/a>‘, ‘Pleasure in reading is the true function of all books’<\/a> and ‘Literature acknowledges no boundaries’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/p>\n

[1] See comments published in \u2018Portsmouth is Now Library Conscious: A Review of 60 Years\u2019 Work in the City\u2019, Evening News <\/em>(Portsmouth), 30 May 1944.<\/p>\n

[2] James G. Ollie, The Portsmouth Reader<\/em>, July 1947.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this blog, part of a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, reveals that Park Building, location for History\u2019s Open Days, was once home to the city\u2019s central library. Rob\u2019s research focuses on society\u2019s leisure practices, and he teaches a number of units that focus on one of the most popular leisure pursuits of the first half of the twentieth century, going to the cinema. Portsmouth\u2019s first public library didn\u2019t open until 1883, much later than most other sizeable cities in England. Indeed, the country\u2019s first public library was opened over thirty years earlier, in Manchester in September […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,4],"tags":[43,27,14,40,39,80,79,98],"class_list":["post-1238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-history","category-research-in-focus","tag-education","tag-heritage","tag-history","tag-literature","tag-local-history","tag-public-libraries","tag-reading","tag-twentieth-century"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/park-building-e1543426811751.jpg?fit=619%2C299&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-jY","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1242,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions\/1242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}