Boro Park Flashback: Borough Park Library

By Yehudit Garmaise

  “If you want to borrow a book in Boro Park,” a Boro Park resident said, “this is where you will hopefully find it.”

   In 1904, 117 years ago, the Borough Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which is located at 1265 43rd St., first opened as a small collection of books on 54th Street and 14th Avenue.

    The Borough Park library branch, which boasts one of the highest circulation rates in Brooklyn, officially became a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in 1907, when more than 60% of Borough Park’s population was comprised of immigrants and first-generation Americans, who came from Germany, Italy, Poland, and Russia. 

   In 1926, the Borough Park branch moved to 13th Avenue, but the well-attended library soon outgrew its new space. 

   On November 28, 1955, the present-day branch, which had doubled the number of books it had in its 13th Avenue location, opened at 1265 43rd St. with a collection of 53,000 books.

   Although usually the Borough Park library ranks in the top 10 of Brooklyn’s branches for attendance, in March the COVID-19 pandemic caused the Brooklyn Public Library to close all 60 of its branches, while continuing to lend digital books and offer online programming for children and adults.

   Since Nov. 30, 2020, the Boro Park Library has served as a home for New York City’s Learning Bridges program, which provides free childcare and programming for children who are in 3-K to 8th grade on the days when their schools were scheduled for remote learning.  

  “What a beautiful building!” said another Boro Parker, who took advantage of the branch’s Japanese conversation classes. “I thought learning Japanese sounded interesting so I had to try it out. It is a very wonderful program taught by native Japanese speakers.”

    A longtime Boro Park resident said that the branch has a particularly good collection of Jewish history books, which are useful for research projects. In particular, she enjoying using a compilation of people’s eyewitness stories of different events in history.

  “They have a nice selection of books on all topics; it is very nice,” said the Boro Park resident, who added that the Boro Park branch is organized, clean, and the people who work there are very helpful. It is a great environment in which to work and read. It is nice and quiet.”

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