How Women’s Clubs Helped Start Our Library System
Celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8

03/08/22

By: C. B.

The seeds of the Miami-Dade Public Library System we know today were planted in the mid to late 1800’s, as the Women’s Club Movement grew across the United States.

The women who led the movement wanted to create spaces to learn and participate in intellectual discussions like their male counterparts. As the movement evolved, leaders added social and neighborhood reforms to their agenda.

From these origins would come the women’s clubs that started the first libraries in Miami.

The Lemon City Reading Room, opened in a small cottage on April 7, 1894, was the first community library established in Miami. Shortly after, the Cocoanut Grove (original spelling) Reading Room was founded in 1895 through the support of local women's clubs and organizations.

Local women pioneers include Mary Barr Munroe (pictured below), who along with her husband Kirk Munroe, were responsible for starting the Pine Needles Club, the organization that founded the Coconut Grove Library in 1901.

The Lemon City Reading Room, which grew to become the Lemon City Library Association, raised money to build the Lemon City Library, which opened in 1902.

The Married Ladies’ Afternoon Club, established in 1900, became the Miami Woman’s Club in 1906. The Miami Woman’s Club had the third largest library in the state of Florida by 1923.

In 1926, the new Woman’s Club of Miami building was completed, which would go on to house the Flagler Memorial Library.

By 1942, the number of libraries in Miami, including Flagler Memorial Library, had increased to seven. These libraries, which operated independently of each other, eventually joined together under one system to form the Miami Public Library, which became an official City of Miami department in 1945.