Bainbridge House

The town of Princeton's first purpose built libraries, among the first in the country, were those of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Lenox Library (1843),^[3] and Princeton University, Chancellor Green Library (1873).^[4] The town itself however would not have a library to call its own until the twentieth century.

The Princeton Public Library opened in 1909, and has had three different homes. The library was originally located at the historic Bainbridge House on Nassau Street, which is the current home of the Princeton Historical Society. Bainbridge house had been built in 1766 by Job Stockton and was the birthplace of naval hero William Bainbridge. The house came into the ownership of Princeton University, which rented it to the library for $1 a year.^[5]

Witherspoon Street

The growing library moved in 1966 to a building at 65 Witherspoon Street. By 2002 the library had a collection of 130,000 books in a building designed for 80,000 and the decision was made to build a new home for the library on the same site.^[6] The library was then moved to a temporary location at 301 North Harrison Street during the construction of the new 58,000-square-foot (5,400 m²), state-of-the-art library which was opened at 65 Witherspoon Street in April 2004. The new building and the library's new logos and signage were designed by Hillier Architecture. The building is named for George and Estelle Sands, who made a $5 million donation, with half going to provide an endowment. The J. Seward Johnson Charitable Trust donated $1 million and the university $400,000. The total cost of the new building was $18 million with two-thirds of that raised from private donations, $4 million from Princeton Township, and $2 million from Princeton Borough.^[7]