Digital Bob Archive

The Draper Club of Juneau has long gone into history, but it left an enduring monument: the Juneau Public Library. Not the building on Fourth Street, but the institution itself.

Draper Clubs were named for Andrew Sloan Draper, an educator and prolific writer and compiler. He was editor-in-chief of the 10-volume \"Draper's Self-Culture\" which apparently inspired the clubs whose purpose was \"to study books and civic problems.\" The Juneau club was organized not long after Draper's death on April 27, 1913.

Back in 1897 a Juneau Public Library Association had been formed and a library started. It was housed in the federal Court House, on the site of the present State Office Building, but the building burned to the ground on January 31, 1898, and the library with it.

In the summer of 1914 members of the Juneau Draper Club voted to establish a public library and to maintain it for one year as an experiment. A small building that had housed the law offices of Cobb & Malony, at 222 East Third Street (approximately opposite the main entrance of the present Behrends Building), was rented. Some funds were donated; the city contributed coal and a transfer company hauled it free; another transfer contributed miscellaneous hauling. The Alaska Electric Light & Power Company donated a part of the electricity and the Juneau & Douglas Telephone Company provided a free telephone.

A reading room was opened on August 13, 1914, and the circulation department on December 5, with 1000 books on the shelves including 400 that had been donated. A membership fee of 50 cents was charged borrowers and before long 567 persons had signed up. This helped to pay the salary of the librarian and the rent, a total of $125 a month. But even with donations and that low overhead, the Draper Club was unable to maintain the library.

Public meetings were held in the summer of 1915 and a non-profit Library Association was formed and incorporated with 32 charter members. A canvass of the town raised $1,000 and there were many fundraising affairs including theatrical events and a benefit baseball game between the \"Library All-Stars\" and the Perseverance Mine team, champions of the Gastineau Channel League. The game was played on the ball field in Last Chance Basin and the All-Stars won, 10-2.

The Draper Club turned the library over to the Association and in September, 1915, disbanded. But the Association, despite widespread public support, also had financial problems. In May, 1916, the Association asked the Juneau City Council to consider taking over the financial responsibility of the library, and this was done on August 1, 1916. For many years, however, the library was administered by the Association.

In June, 1918, the library became even more a part of the City of Juneau by moving to two rooms on the top floor of the Juneau City Hall at Fourth and Main Streets, where the Alaska Office Building stands today. When the City Hall was razed for the construction of the office building, in 1950, the library moved temporarily to the Teen Age Club on South Seward Street, a site now occupied by the Sealaska Building. It remained there until November 11, 1951, when it opened in the new Juneau Memorial Library building on Fourth Street.