Edgewater Public Library

The story

A $15,000 grant made on March 16, 1915 by the Carnegie Corporation built this library — one of only 36 Carnegie libraries in all of New Jersey. It opened in 1916, and above its entrance the words Edgewater Free Library are still engraved in stone. A century later, in 2009, it earned a place on both state and national registers of historic places. Today it circulates more than 52,000 items a year to a community of under 8,000 people — a quiet measure of how much a small city depends on one enduring room.