page_title: Clarissa C. Cook Library/Blue Ribbon News Building
section_title: Clarissa C. Cook Library
hierarchical_section_title: Clarissa C. Cook Library/Blue Ribbon News Building / Clarissa C. Cook Library
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking north on Brady Street from Fifth Street in Davenport, Iowa. On the left is the Wupperman Block/I.O.O.F. Hall, the Old City Hall (with the tower) and the Cook Memorial Library, which has been torn down. Further up the street on the left is the Trinity Episcopal Church and First Presbyterian Church, which was built as St. Luke's Episcopal. On the right is the spire to First Methodist. All of the church congregations moved to other locations and the buildings were torn down.
context_page_description: Clarissa C. Cook Library/Blue Ribbon News Building was located at 528 Brady Street, Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was noted on the National Register of Historic Places in April, 1983 as Cook Memorial Library and listed in July 1983 under the "Clarissa C. Cook Library/Blue Ribbon News Bldg." name. It has subsequently been torn down, and was delisted from the National Register in 2014.
context_section_description: The first library association in the city of Davenport was organized in April 1839 and called the Carey Library Association of the Town of Davenport. However, there is no mention of it after that date. There were other attempts at starting a library in the town, but finances were always a problem.
  On July 6, 1877, Clarissa Cook contacted the Library Association, and offered to donate $10,000 for a library building. She stipulated that the property had to be bought by the people of Davenport. She donated the money in memory of her husband who had desired to establish a library in the town. He had bequeathed the money in his will to the existing library to be paid after his wife's death, however, Mrs. Cook decided to make the payment at this time.
  On November 7, 1877, the cornerstone of the Cook Memorial Library was laid in a Masonic ceremony. Judge John Forrest Dillon delivered an address. Another $1,000 was needed to complete the building and it was paid for by Mrs. Cook. The new building was dedicated in July 1878.
  The library suffered from poor finances as before and in January 1900 Andrew Carnegie, who had been an honorary member of the library board, offered $50,000 to build a public library. In May of that year the first board of public library trustees was named and a year later Carnegie upped his donation to $75,000. The new library was opened on the corner of Main and Fourth Streets in 1904 and the contents of the Cook library were moved to the new location.
caption: The Clarissa C. Cook Library is the third building on the left in this 1880 photograph.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery14.0.8081.709", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:19 16:54:00", "Image ExifOffset": "2204", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "DA95840D95474C6C9E3F0450FD7B0E97", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}