From the Liverpool Public Library: Celebrate as LPL turns 125

By Mark Bialczak

LPL Communications Specialist

There will be a little party at the Liverpool Public Library on Thursday, June 21. Pardon us if we strut around a little bit that day. But feel free to join us in celebration.

That’s the day the LPL turns 125 years old. On June 21, 1893, reads the history section of LPL.org, the Liverpool school district’s Board of Education issued provisional charter No. 739 to the Liverpool Public Library Board.

Yes, there will be some sort of cake next week.

You might want to grab some before you attend the Ukulele Workshop in the Carman Community Room. That’s not to be confused with the monthly Saturday Ukulele for Beginner event instructor Pat Doherty typically holds in the Sargent Meeting Room.

There are two names that deserve a mention in honor of this upcoming big birthday. Yes, Frances Carman and D. Kenneth Sargent are important figures in the LPL’s history, significant enough to have the library’s top two public meeting rooms named after them.

Carman was the LPL’s first fully trained, full-time director, starting at the LPL in 1964, the year after it became a member of the Onondaga County system. She prided herself in bringing the library’s book and periodical collections up a notch. She made sure the LPL was open to the community with a full schedule, and she hired two more professional librarians to make sure the staff could keep up with the services she wanted to deliver to the public. The Carman Community Room was named after her when the present building opened in 1975. She lived to be 97, passing away in Cleveland, Ohio, in August of 2003.

Donald Kenneth Sargent was a prominent area architect who designed several area buildings, including the present LPL and Liverpool High School. He taught architecture at Syracuse University for 30 years, and also was dean of the School of Architecture. After that, his firm, Crenshaw and Policy, designed Liverpool’s Johnson Park. His wife, Marjorie Stevens Sargent, was a native and lifetime resident of Liverpool. He died in 1991 at the age of 87.