Newark Public Library

The story

The Newark Public Library is home to Philip Roth's collections — a quiet, potent fact for a library that began as something far more exclusive. Its roots trace to the Newark Library Association, a private organization chartered in 1847. In 1887, Newark's people voted to make it free, and two years later the Newark Free Public Library opened on West Park Street with over 10,000 books inherited from that private body. Now a seven-branch system and a Statewide Reference Center, it still carries that original democratic pivot at its core.