Fayetteville Public Library

The Fayetteville Public Library (FPL), located at 401 W. Mountain St. in Fayetteville (Washington County), was established in 1916. In the twenty-first century, the award-winning FPL operates in the expanded 190,000-square-foot Blair Library building and circulates more than a million items each year.

Crucial to the library’s establishment was a group of citizens led by University of Arkansas (UA) librarian Julia Vaulx. The first year, it operated on an $840.15 budget and occupied two rooms in the Washington County Courthouse basement. The library moved briefly to a cottage at East Ave. and Meadow St. and, in 1937, settled in the city administration building, where it remained for twenty-five years. Irene D. Galloway became head librarian in 1935, and the library grew considerably under her leadership.

Following World War II, Fayetteville’s economy boomed. The population doubled, and the library outgrew the city administration building. Planning for a new library began with donations from residents, including Gilbert Swanson, who donated a site on Dickson Street valued at $35,000 in memory of his mother-in-law, Roberta Fulbright. The City of Fayetteville assumed ownership of the library in July 1959 and passed a $225,000 bond issue in November 1959 to fund a new building.

In 1962, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and more than 1,000 guests dedicated the new $300,000 library. Architect Warren Segraves, a Fayetteville native, designed the two-story building of brick, steel, and glass that opened the library to views of the southern edge of the Washington-Willow Historic District. The Fulbright Foundation presented the library with a donation of $13,500 in 1966 to buy land east of the site for the 3,200-square-foot addition that would be opened in May 1970.

In December 1989, the City of Fayetteville purchased a medical office building to the west, also designed by Segraves. By 1992, the two buildings were joined, which allowed for a 31,500-square-foot facility to house the Fayetteville Public Library, the headquarters of the Ozark Regional Library System, and the Talking Books service for patrons with various disabilities.

On July 1, 1999, the Washington County Library System was established as a result of the dissolution of the two-county Ozark Regional Library System. After the Talking Books service was moved to the Fort Smith Public Library and the Arkansas State Library in 1999, its former space was converted into a computer station center funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

On August 15, 2000, and again on October 1, 2002, Fayetteville citizens voted and approved more funding to help build a new main library. A capital campaign chaired by Ann Henry Willard and the Pat Walker Charitable Foundation raised $500,000 to complete the project. Other donations included $100,000 from both the Bank of Fayetteville and the Anderson and Imhoff families. Barbara Tyson donated $2 million for the Randal Tyson Children’s Library. Jim Blair donated $3 million on February 27, 2002, for a building what would honor his late wife, Diane Divers Blair.

On May 20, 2003, the Fayetteville City Council approved ending the inter-local agreement with the Washington County Library System and established the Fayetteville Public Library as an independent city library beginning on January 1, 2004.

FPL’s new building was designed by the architectural firm MSR Design (Thomas Meyer, FAIA, Jeffrey Scherer, FAIA, and Garth Rockcastle, FAIA) and was completed in 2004. The library opened its doors on October 8, 2004, boasting 88,000 square feet of new space. Twenty years later, the original Blair Library space was housing the reference collection, adult fiction and nonfiction, genealogy materials, DVDs and CDs, and meeting and study spaces.

In 2005, FPL won the Gale/Library Journal’s 2005 Library of the Year Award.

In 2013, the Fayetteville Public Library Board of Directors approved a 2030 Master Plan presented by MSR Design, recommending expansion of the Blair Library to meet the community’s library needs of the future. The library board also made an offer to purchase four acres south of the library for future expansion.

Construction crews broke ground on the Fayetteville Public Library’s new expansion on March 2, 2019. The $50 million expansion added 82,000 square feet of new space. The expansion opened in January 2021. The expansion includes the addition of an expanded youth department, the teaching kitchen, the Center for Innovation, an event center, and the Art & Movement Room.

The original building and the expansion make FPL a sizeable structure with 190,000 square feet of space. It houses preschool, grade-school, teen, adult, and genealogy library collections, as well as an 8,700-square-foot-event center, a deli, a commercial teaching kitchen, a fabrication and robotics lab, simulation labs, a computer collaboration space, a photography studio, audio and video recording studios, art and movement spaces, an outdoor gathering glade, and twenty-one study rooms.

According to its budgeting and programming statistics for 2023, FPL had 1,193,168 total checkouts, 424,293 library visits, and 90,489 library cardholders, and it circulated 377,151 total collection items.

The library’s roof caught fire on April 14, 2024, resulting in smoke damage to several offices and youth areas.

For additional information:
Berry, John N., III. “Gale/LJ Library of the Year: Fayetteville Public Library, AR—Five Steps to Excellence.” Library Journal, June 16, 2005. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/2005-galelj-library-of-the-year-fayetteville-public-library-ar-five-steps-to-excellence (accessed May 22, 2024).

Fayetteville Public Library. https://www.faylib.org/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

“Fayetteville Public Library History.” Vertical File No. 2. Grace Keith Genealogy Collection. Fayetteville Public Library, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Hogan, J. B. “Early History of Fayetteville Public Library.” Flashback 73 (Winter 2023): 173–174, 176–177.

Ryburn, Stacy. “Fayetteville Public Library Expansion Nearing Completion.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 12, 2020. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jan/12/fayetteville-public-library-expansion-n/ (accessed May 22, 2024).

Wilson, Erica. “Fayetteville Public Library Reopens with Long-Awaited Expansion.” Arkansas Traveler, January 25, 2021. https://www.uatrav.com/news/article_95d18832-5f50-11eb-b697-3f69fc66f671.html (accessed May 22, 2024).

Cora Hardy-Boland
Fayetteville Public Library