Before it was part of the YMCA, a majestic Dryades Street building was the first library for Black New Orleanians.
The Dryades Street Library opened in 1915, 18 years after the New Orleans Public Library was established to serve white people. Only Black lawyers were allowed in that library to access law books.
According to Black Past, Library board president James Hardy Dillard persuaded philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to donate $25,000 for a “colored” library. It was located in Dryades Street Market, a Black commercial area. Starting with 5,000 books and a two-person staff, the library had adult and children’s reading rooms and an auditorium where the NAACP and other groups met.
Dryades – the only branch open on Sundays – lacked city funding, according to the Preservation Research Center,
“City neglect of the Dryades branch was unfortunately a pattern that developed almost immediately,” the research center states. “Funding data from its opening through the early 1930s showed that the branch consistently received the lowest disbursements from the city.”
Still, the library was a beacon to the Black community for 50 years. Elaine Parker Adams, who visited the library in the 1940s and 50s, talked to
the New Orleans Public Library about her experience.
“The Dryades Street Library was a monumental building in our lives,” she said. “Walking up the central steps and the double staircases made us feel very important. The large rooms with polished wood floors and soft-lit chandeliers made the library a source of elegant comfort. I think that one of the most striking features of the Dryades Street Library was how important that building and its staff made the patrons feel. The library elevated us.”
Dryades closed after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, but the building still stands. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.