The Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company of Philadelphia The Library Company is an independent research library specializing in American history

Please join us on June 23rd at 12:00 pm EST for a Fireside Chat discussion with the authors and co-editors of Claiming L...
05/28/2026

Please join us on June 23rd at 12:00 pm EST for a Fireside Chat discussion with the authors and co-editors of Claiming Land, Claiming Water: Borders and the People Who Crossed Them in the Early Modern Atlantic. (Penn Press, 2026)
Casey Schmitt will host a roundtable discussion with the editors and two authors in the new edited collection, Claiming Land, Claiming Water: Borders and the People Who Crossed Them in the Early Modern Atlantic. (UPenn, 2026). Co-editors Rachel Herrmann and Jessica Choppin Roney will be joined by authors Christian Koot and Samuel Truett to discuss this collaborative endeavor. The authors in Claiming Land, Claiming Water investigate how and why some people imagined and made claims to bounded space—and how and why other people confounded or challenged those claims—through a formative period of intense change in North America and the Atlantic world (c. 1630–1860).
Click the link in our bio to register now!
Or visit: https://ow.ly/XaQ750Z4SkR

Open now through October 9th! Philadelphia’s Radical Revolution tells the story of the artisans and tradesmen who drove ...
05/26/2026

Open now through October 9th! Philadelphia’s Radical Revolution tells the story of the artisans and tradesmen who drove the Revolution more forcefully than in any other colony. Early in the Revolution, the city’s political and economic elites, many of whom rejected the spirit of rebellion, had been pushed aside by working men who seized political power and wrote a new state constitution that proved to be the most radically democratic constitution of the entire Revolution.

These ardent patriots, backed by the militia, demanded absolute loyalty to the American cause. Forcing citizens to choose: swear an oath of allegiance to Pennsylvania or risk imprisonment, confiscation of property, or even death.

After the war was won, the radicals retained much of their power, but in the early 1780s, Philadelphia's long tradition of political moderation slowly re-emerged. When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, the city’s delegates brought this spirit of moderation to its deliberations and were influential in designing a federal government that balanced popular power with checks and restraints.

This exhibition does not attempt to tell the whole story of the Revolution. It focuses on what happened in Philadelphia and the dramatic shifts its citizens endured through broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers, and prints collected in the city during the Revolution itself. It is shaped by the unique perspectives of two avid contemporaries: the Swiss emigrant, Pierre Eugène Du Simitière, who collected and preserved many items that others disregarded, and John Dickinson, the famously moderate “penman of the Revolution” at the center of Revolutionary politics. Together, they preserve one of the richest records of Philadelphia’s radical experiment in democracy.

Which bird are you?!? The flashy kingfisher of Fig. I, the pensive woodcock of Fig. II, or the humble goose of Fig. III?...
05/22/2026

Which bird are you?!? The flashy kingfisher of Fig. I, the pensive woodcock of Fig. II, or the humble goose of Fig. III? Tag yourself in the comments below!

Image: Hand-colored plate illustration, from The Library Company’s copy of The Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature, by Richard Bradley.
Printed for W. Mears in London, 1721

Please join the Library Company of Philadelphia on June 16th at 5:30 for our annual Juneteenth Lecture featuring Vincent...
05/15/2026

Please join the Library Company of Philadelphia on June 16th at 5:30 for our annual Juneteenth Lecture featuring Vincent Brown, Kendra Field, and Evelynn Hammonds.

For centuries, Black lives have been counted, recorded, and categorized through systems of data. From plantation ledgers and slave ship records to digitized archives and genetic ancestry testing, these forms of documentation have shaped how slavery, race, and freedom are understood. Yet they have also left gaps, distortions, and silences that scholars continue to confront.
This conversation brings together Vincent Brown, Kendra Field, and Evelynn Hammonds to examine how different forms of data have been used to produce knowledge about Black life, and how those records can be reinterpreted to recover history.

Moving from the ledger to the genome, this panel explores how data has functioned as both a tool of power and a means of historical recovery, and what it means to reconstruct Black life across archives, databases, and scientific knowledge in the present.

Click the link in our bio or visit: https://ow.ly/zHrB50Z0bpz to register now!

The Library Company of Philadelphia, the “mother of all subscription libraries”, wishes all moms a very happy Mother’s D...
05/10/2026

The Library Company of Philadelphia, the “mother of all subscription libraries”, wishes all moms a very happy Mother’s Day! 🌻

This photograph was taken by John Frank Keith (1883-1947). The subjects, a mother holding her baby, stand in front of a Philadelphia home next to a baby carriage. If you look closely, you see another child in the open window behind her head.
Keith was a Philadelphia photographer who specialized in portraiture, mainly of working-class Philadelphians in South Philadelphia and Kensington from the 1910s to the 1940s.

Image: John Frank Keith Photograph Collection, Mother holding infant, Philadelphia [graphic]

05/05/2026

Known as fore-edge paintings, these tiny images are sometimes used to show ownership or identify the book by its contents. Other times, they are purely ornamental.

This 1817 copy of La Henriade by Voltaire has a hidden painting depicting Napoleon’s house La Malmaison, where he lived with his wife Josephine, who stayed in the house after their divorce. Napoleon returned to the house after her death before moving to Saint Helena in exile. He died there on May 5, 1821.

Library Company shareholder Zaccheus Collins (1764-1831) is described as a merchant in the Library Company’s share trans...
05/01/2026

Library Company shareholder Zaccheus Collins (1764-1831) is described as a merchant in the Library Company’s share transactions, but he is also known for his interest in botany. He had an impressive collection of preserved plant specimens, and he maintained a rich professional correspondence with other notable collectors and botanists. Check out our blog (link in bio!) for more about Collins's connections to the Library Company. https://librarycompany.org/2026/04/29/shareholder-spotlight-zaccheus-collins-2/

Image 1: This three-volume set was once part of the private library of Zaccheus Collins; it is now part of the Library Company’s collection after it was purchased from his estate in 1832. Detail from volume III of Jacob Bigelow, American Medical Botany, Being a Collection of the Native Medicinal Plants of the United States (Boston, 1820).

Image 2: Receipt from purchase of books from estate of Zaccheus Collins, Box 29, Folder 22, Library Company of Philadelphia records (MSS00270).

Closing out is the birthday of the Library of Congress, our oldest federal cultural institution. It was founded on Apr...
04/24/2026

Closing out is the birthday of the Library of Congress, our oldest federal cultural institution. It was founded on April 24, 1800 when President John Adams signed an act of Congress moving the federal government from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. With that came $5,000 for Congress to use on books.
So what did Congress use as its reference library before this? Well, they used the oldest cultural institution in the US, of course! Pictured above is a snippet from the Directors’ Minutes of the Library Company from August 1774 granting them permission to utilize the Library Company’s holdings.

April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate, enjoy this page from one of our recent acquisitions, an 1889 illustrated g...
04/14/2026

April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate, enjoy this page from one of our recent acquisitions, an 1889 illustrated gift edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic poem The Raven 🐦‍⬛

This book is currently in the process of being cataloged, but will soon be available for researchers in the Scheide Reading Room!

Library Company shareholder Marguerite Marie LaHalle Cret (1877-1965) is difficult to find in the historical record exce...
03/27/2026

Library Company shareholder Marguerite Marie LaHalle Cret (1877-1965) is difficult to find in the historical record except in relation to her husband, architect Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945). One Paul Cret biographer described her thus: “Madame Cret, as she was known in Philadelphia, was a most distinguished person in appearance and intellect. Her wide reading in literature and the arts complemented that of her husband, as did her sense of humor.” Check out our blog (link in bio!) for more about the Cret family's connections to the Library Company. https://librarycompany.org/2026/03/26/shareholder-spotlight-marguerite-marie-lahalle-cret/

Image 1: George M. Brightbill, collector, Benjamin Franklin Bridge postcard (circa 1926). Photolithograph.

Image 2: The Crets donated materials to the Library Company several times between 1938 and 1941, including this work: Sébastian de Pontault Beaulieu, Louis XIIII: Les Plans et Profils des Principales Villes et Lieux Considerables du Comte de Flandre (Paris, circa 1690). Gift of Paul Cret.

Address

1314 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA
19107

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 4:45pm
Tuesday 9am - 4:45pm
Wednesday 9am - 4:45pm
Thursday 9am - 4:45pm
Friday 9am - 4:45pm

Telephone

+12155463181

Website

https://lnk.bio/librarycompany

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Library Company of Philadelphia posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share