By Gina Malone

As its 125^th anniversary approaches, Lanier Library in Tryon stands in stately elegance, an historic testament to the determination of some fairly forthright ladies who, in today’s less male-dominated society, would surely have shone in corporate boardrooms and political circles.

When five of those ladies sat down to the genteel pastime of afternoon tea in 1890, it was, of course, a simpler time and Tryon, a rougher place. Incorporated in 1885, the town was growing with the railroad that connected it to places beyond, but there were streets of red clay and only two dozen or so homes. The 36-room Tryon City Hotel, later Oak Hall, provided rooms for travelers – many of them well-to-do northerners seeking a welcoming wintertime climate – who stepped off the six daily trains. The downtown was a handful of buildings, among them a general store, a livery stable and a drugstore.

What the town did not have was a library, and this was what the LeDuc sisters from Minneapolis – Miss Mary, Miss Lucy and Elizabeth LeDuc Boardman – along with friends from Kentucky, Mrs. Thomas Knott and Mrs. Amelia Spence, discussed over tea that January day. Their discussion, it turned out, was not a wistful one; they laid out a plan, and the next day found them canvassing homes in town to gauge interest.

Soon after, 38 women aged 14 to 71 attended a meeting, agreeing to form a club for the purpose of establishing a library in town. Officers were elected, and what had been talk over tea became, in the minds of these committed women, a plan of action that never lost steam.

The legacy of their pioneering work and the hard work of all the women who followed in their footsteps is the Lanier Library Association which, in April, will celebrate this anniversary with events planned throughout the year. It is one of only 16 membership libraries left in the U.S., and the only one in North Carolina.

In its first 40 years, it existed for female members only, a place of intellectual and artistic stimulation with its many programs and a place where the literature-starved women could borrow books. Some programs were open to the general public, men included, but admission was charged for these events as a way of raising the money necessary to keep the library operational and growing.

Today’s collection of over 20,000 volumes began with the donation of two special books. When she heard that the ladies wanted to call themselves the Lanier Club in memory of poet Sidney Lanier who died in Lynn in 1881, his widow Mary – who had stayed on in Tryon with her sons after his death – offered two volumes of her husband’s poetry to begin the collection.

The library had truly humble beginnings. During its first 15 years, it was a shelf awaiting a permanent home. With the purchase of the lot at the corner of Melrose Ave. and Chestnut St., and, with the help of a small loan, the club was able to build, at a cost of $1,375, the brown-shingled structure that, with some additions and renovation over the years, still houses the library today. It opened to the public in December, 1905.

For more information about becoming a member of this historic organization, please call 828-859-9535, or stop by during open hours for a tour. Visit the library’s Facebook page (Lanier Library Association) and the website at www.lanierlib.org.

Next week we’ll take a look at poet Sidney Lanier, whose name and books were early gifts to the library.

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of an eight week series about the history of Lanier Library.