THE HOTCHKISS LIBRARY
Our Origins, our Present and our Future
Maria Bissell Hotchkiss and Bruce Price will forever be a part of Sharon
history and be a part of the Historic Town Green.
The former donated the library in 1893 and the latter was the prominent
New York architect whom she chose to design the building.
The original Library opened to its members on September 13, 1893 with
2,640 books and now, after a massive weeding effort, has 14,000 items,
including books, DVDs, VCRs and periodicals. And the current library
is still not large enough to house even this smaller collection.
The Library Board is studying the feasibility of restoring the existing
structure to make it accessible to all its patrons including the handicapped,
children and parents with strollers. At the same time the Board is studying
the feasibility of building an addition to the building both to house its
current and future collections and to provide a children’s area, computer
accessibility and other necessary amenities.
It is said that Maria Hotchkiss chose Bruce Price as the architect upon the
recommendation of Timothy Dwight V, the President of Yale, where Brice Price
had built several buildings. Maria Hotchkiss’s involvement in all the details
is most evidenced by the fact that she herself picked the stones that were
used and actually rejected the first two samples that were submitted to her.
Bruce Price is most well known for his construction of the first 13 houses
at the exclusive Tuxedo Park enclave, which was among the first gated communities
in the United States. He also designed the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec and
several of the Canadian Pacific hotels. Originally working in the shingle
style, in his later years he embraced the Romanesque Revival style, popularized
by Henry Hobson Richardson, which is why the style of the Hotchkiss Library
is often referred to as Richardsonian. Incidentally he was also the father
of Emily Post of Etiquette fame.
Maria Bissell Hotchkiss was the wife of the prominent local industrialist
Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss, who had died in France, his new adopted home,
in 1885 and she built the library in his memory. A fine bust of the great
industrialist, carved by Moses Jacob Ezekiel in 1879 still presides over
the patrons from its location on the balcony.
The Library Board is looking at the restoration of the current building,
which was designed to house no more than 6-8000 volumes and to putting on
an addition so that the library can function for the foreseeable future
as the centre of activity for Sharon, for which it was originally designed.
Currently the library is not handicap accessible in any way nor does it have
a satisfactory children’s area or other necessary amenities, such as a
handicap accessible bathroom, kitchen area, meeting areas or study rooms.
The Board applied for and received a matching grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation and the Connecticut Humanities Council to carry out the feasibility study. The grant is officially known as the Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Grant (HPTAG.)
Pursuant to the grant the Board has retained Franzen and Associates as the architects to provide preliminary designs for the restoration and for the addition and to obtain all the necessary Town approvals. The restoration has to be carried out within the terms of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. The most important of these Guidelines is that the essential form and the integrity of the historic structure must be preserved so that future observers will always be able to distinguish the original from the addition.
Within these constraints it is planned to have a rendering of the “new” library so that it is available to all the citizens of Sharon and at all times the Board will be open to comments. In fact it is planned to have at least one informational meeting with all interested parties so that this will be a Sharon project and not just a library project as the library is the future of the town and will survive all the current residents.