Naperville Public Libraries: celebrating one hundred years of community service

              Celebration
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The Naperville Public Libraries
Celebrating One Hundred Years of Community Service
by Jane league
A young child on a wooden step pushes a button beside the darkened window until its contents light up like the illumination of a dream. This window is her favorite part of the library. Beyond the glass is a miniature room that resembles, in astonishing detail, Naperville's original Nichols Library.
The girl's mother stands behind her, and they marvel at the broad golden staircase that leads to a second floor balcony surrounding the main level of the tiny room. She asks about the large, drum-like steam radiator at the foot of the steps, where people used to warm themselves on cold wmter days as they searched the adjacent card catalog. The mother explains that the lamps on the walls are like early electric lights and that there wasn't always a funny- looking black telephone, like the one poised on the librarian's desk. In the early days, that was considered a luxury. A typewriter was the necessity. Bookshelves stand in tall, straight rows like ranks of soldiers in a roadside parade. A few books lay open, pages down, on polished wooden tables and stools. That's people lived in rural Naperville, a horse and buggy town of some 2,200 people, caught hold of someone's dream and had the privilege of bringing it to fulfilbnent.
On August 15, 1895, miles from Naperville and a century earlier, James Lawrence Nichols I dictated his autobiography and last will and testament from his deathbed in a sanitorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Catapulted by a life of hardship, the orphaned Nichols had become one of the most successful and significant figures in Naperville's history. Following a childhood of brutal beatings at the hands of farmers who took him in as a laborer, Nichols wandered from farm to farm until he found work that afforded him study time and refuge from abuse. Eventually he saved enough money to attend a classical seminary, and when he was 19 years old, he began to teach.
Nichols arrived in Naperville in 1876, intent on graduating from North-Western College (now North Central) in 1880. Following graduation, he taught
one year as principal for the Naperville public school and then became a professor for the Commercial Department at the college. During his eight years there, he recalled doing some of the hardest work of his life.
Perhaps part of that feeling had to do with the fact that he not only taught business and economics courses, but also created his own textbooks. The Business Guide, published in 1886, offered a common sense approach to the business world and eventually sold over 4 million copies. It was upon realization of the book's potential success and his other business ventures that Nichols resigned from the college in order to establish J. L. Nichols and Co., a publishing company. There he continued to write guide books offering the sort of practical advice he undoubtedly desired in his own youth: "Young men, you are the architects of your own fortune. Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take self- reliance as your star. Think well of yourself. Be generous, advertise your business. Make money and do good with it. Love truth and virtue." The publishing company proved to be a very lucrative, life-long venture for this Naperville resident, whom one of his students described as "one of the grandest characters this century has produced."
As Nichols looked back on his forty-four years that mid-August day, he remembered Naperville fondly—^his wife and children, his many students and good friends. Before his death three days later, he bequeathed, among other things, $10,000 to the city for the establishment of a library, so that no child would be without books as he had been. And, wisely, Nichols made certain that his legacy would be cared for. His gift was contingent on the city's agreement to maintain the library, supply its materials, and provide employees for its ongoing use.
When news of Nichols' death reached town, the community's deep sadness was only gradually replaced with the excitement of a prospective new library for its residents—one of the first in all of DuPage County. With the City Council's approval