Historic Rice Public Library

Rice Public Library opened on 5 November 1888. Its first trustees included former New Hampshire Gov. Ichabod Goodwin, who was married to Arabella’s cousin Sarah Parker Rice. Arabella remains something of a mystery despite her affluence and prominence as one of the area’s wealthiest residents, with no known portraits or photographs of her. Her initials “AR” are carved in a panel to the left of the archway over the main entrance, also inscribed along the Italian marble fireplace on the first floor, and the year “1888” is etched above the grand second-floor balcony. Before this building, the library occupied a single room in what is now Wallingford Square, and in its early days it maintained separate reading rooms for ladies and gentlemen. The second floor served as a meeting place for Civil War veterans of the local Grand Army of the Republic chapter. In 1979, the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and that year gardens designed by Olmstead Associates of Brookline, Massachusetts, were established with funding from the Harborside Garden Club, which maintained them for many years. As the building grew too cramped for expanding collections, the former Southern York County District Courthouse across the street was purchased in 1988 and renovated into the Taylor Building annex, where the judge’s bench became the circulation desk and the judicial chambers became the staff room; it opened in October 1990 and was named for local physician and former trustee Paul Taylor. In 1991, longtime patron Sarah Almyra Roberts left the library more than $300,000 in her will, funding a major overhaul that removed a false overhead and revealed the ceiling; the second-story room was dedicated in her memory for children’s programming and youth collections, and in January 1992 a plaque was placed beneath her portrait by Kylin J. Bierau. The Kay Howells Room, dedicated to Katherine F. Howells in the former basement, became the periodical room and a meeting space for the board of directors and the Friends of Rice Public Library. On 24 August 2013, the library marked its 125th anniversary with a neighborhood party featuring 18th-century rolling hoop games, antique cars and bicycles, and Victorian-era costumes. Many decades after her death, Arabella’s generosity continued to benefit the citizens of her father’s native town.

Kittery, Maine · United States