Discovering what happened to our library on New Cross Road ............. a pretty neat story

The library in 1911

Now this is how I remember the library at New Cross.

It was an old fashioned style of library with neat solid reading tables, matched by sturdy bookshelves full of everything you might ever want to read and laid out in meticulous order.

And because it was an old fashioned library the rule of silence sat on the place so that even the most accidental noise was greeted with a fierce glare by the librarian.

Of course it was impossible to completely screen out all sound.   Across in the Reading Room there would be the rustling of paper as the pages of the Times and Manchester Guardian were turned and along with that came the thump of the date stamp and the occasional loud bang as someone dropped their pile of books.

I had almost forgotten about the place until I came across an old library copy of a James Joyce book which mother had borrowed and never returned .

Sometime in the 1920s

And as you do I went looking for the library with little hope that it would still be there but the building has survived, although it no longer deals in books but has become home to the Music Room London which offers “a unique building with 5 different rooms ideally suited for a wide array of creative applications. Full bands, practicing drummers and instrumentalists, dance groups, theatrical productions, Photographic and video shoot applications will all find our facility an amazing resource for rehearsals and other sessions."*

In time I will take up their invitation and visit them but in the meantime I am very pleased that they turned over a collection of old images of the place with the promise of more to come.

Back in the 1950s we didn’t take pictures of the buildings we visited, after all if you went there regularly why would you?

But now a full half century on I wish I had access to more photographs of where I grew up especially given  trying to locate them is made just that bit more difficult when you live 180 miles north of New Cross.

Part of the problem is that some of the official images are copyright while the thousands that might have been taken as snaps have been lost or thrown out which in turn means that it can be difficult to get the picture you want.

So with that in mind here courtesy of the Music Room London are a fine collection pictures of the place.

The first was taken when it was opened on July 24 1911 and the second sometime in the 1920's

It was built as a Carnegie Library with money from the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and was one of 660 which he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.

And a day when the snow fell

From humble beginnings Mr Carnegie had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects.

Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.

And because everyone loves a then and now image here is our building again, but just a century or so later on a day when the snow fell from the sky.

All of which just leaves me to return to the story later in the month with more reflections on, New Cross Library, the London Music Room and the Police Gazette

Pictures; New Cross Library, July 1911, circa 1920's and after it had become the Music Room London 2014, courtesy of the Music Room London.



*Music Room London, http://www.musicroomlondon.com/