Thomas Hughes Public Library
One of the first institutions established in Rugby was the Thomas Hughes Free Public Library. The library today is the most historically authentic in the entire Rugby Colony National Register Historic District. It presents literally the same appearance, inside and out, as the day the doors first opened on October 5, 1882. After passing through a small vestibule the visitor enters the main part of the library through a pair of swinging, green baize-covered doors. The interior reveals a decorative sophistication unexpected in the Appalachian mountains, with an ornate plaster ceiling and handsomely designed bookcases and other furniture. The original ladder, with its 1881 patent date stenciled on the bottom of the top rung, is still used; visitors may sit in the original cane-seated chairs; the 1882 shipping labels are still fastened to the bottoms of many of the captain's chairs at the massive walnut library tables.
The library contains more than 7,000 volumes--one of the best representative collections of Victorian-era literature in public view in America. The floor to ceiling shelves contain no books published later than 1898, with most published from the 1860s through the 1880s. Virtually every subject area is represented, including fiction, biography, science, history, etiquette, housekeeping, religion, poetry and drama, sociology, travel, farming and gardening. Works of well known authors such as John Greenleaf Whittier, William Shakespeare, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Robert Burns, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Oliver Wendall Holmes and James Fennimore Cooper share the shelves with hundreds of children's books, including some illustrated by Charles Kingsley and Kate Greenaway.
via http://www.historicrugby.org/library.php#
