Nichols Library: The Downtown Landmark That Started With a $10,000 Bequest
Naperville's flagship library at 200 W. Jefferson Avenue traces its roots to a professor's gift and its first home, the Old Nichols Library of 1898.
Every Naperville institution has an origin story, and the public library's begins with a professor's will. James Lawrence Nichols — a professor at the college that became North Central College, and a successful author and publisher — left a $10,000 bequest to establish a library for the city, and the first Nichols Library opened its doors in September 1898, serving a Naperville of about 2,200 residents.
That first library still stands. The Old Nichols Library at 110 S. Washington Street, designed by Mifflin E. Bell in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, served readers from 1897 until 1986 and was designated a Naperville local landmark in 2017. After years of new uses, the building has been renovated and returned to public life as a restaurant — a second career for the city's first temple of reading.
The library the city uses today is the 'new' Nichols Library at 200 W. Jefferson Avenue, a 63,300-square-foot building that opened in March 1986, four times the size of its Washington Street predecessor. It is the flagship of the Naperville Public Library's three locations, alongside the Naper Boulevard Library and the 95th Street Library.
The system built a national reputation on that foundation: for years running, Naperville Public Library was ranked first in the nation in its population category by Hennen's American Public Library Ratings, a streak that made the library a point of civic pride quoted in every relocation packet the city has sent out since.
On a November evening, the Jefferson Avenue building does its oldest job — a warm, lit room full of neighbors, students at the tables, kids in the children's section, and readers in the seats that overlook the Riverwalk. A $10,000 bequest bought the seed of it in 1898. Naperville has been compounding the interest ever since.
