It is hard to imagine today, that seventy years ago there was no library in the Town of Greece. The Greece Public Library was not even organized until 1958 and didn’t have its own building until 1962.
Beginning in the early 1920s, a book caravan stopped in Greece at the Dewey Avenue Union Church and was succeeded by the Monroe County Traveling Library for decades. For a time, the Willis N. Britton (later Hoover Drive and now Discovery Charter School) school library served as a public library for the community. Every six weeks the county library truck would drop off books and the school would open some evening for a few hours so that patrons could borrow books.
After many years of planning, a provisional charter was granted to the Greece Public Library in 1958. The library created its first home with used furniture and shelving in the new Greece Olympia High School, followed by locations at the Greece Baptist Church and Ridgecrest Plaza. In 1962 a new permanent library building opened on Mitchell Road.
Over time, four additional branches were added to the Town’s library system, starting with Paddy Hill in 1969 when the town leased the vacant Mother of Sorrows Church. Then came the North Greece branch in 1974, located in the North Greece Plaza, followed by Lowden Point branch at 105 Lowden Point Rd, in 1978, (The North Greece branch closed in 1991 and the Lowden Point branch closed in 1994.) A Dewey-Stone branch opened in 1980, in the Dewstone Shopping Center. That branch was moved to Dewey Avenue at Florence Avenue in 1998 and renamed Barnard Crossing Branch. It moved again to 2808 Dewey
Ave in 2014.
After nearly ten years of discussions and planning, including the possibility of moving into the Mall, our new Greece Public Library building opened on the Greece Town Campus in 2000, at which time the Paddy Hill branch closed. The Barnard Crossing branch was the only branch retained after the new library opened. During the Covid pandemic, Barnard Crossing closed for good.
Our new library has had several interior changes since 2000, along with the addition of the Story Garden children’s section in 2021. It is presently finishing a complete interior remodeling to meet the needs of a 21st-century library. The Greece Public Library has certainly come a long way since 1958 and is well-equipped to serve our community for decades to come.
Bill Sauers is a lifelong resident of the Town of Greece and has been an active member of the Greece Historical Society since 1998, serving as the president since 2007. He is a retired engineer technician for the City of Rochester, and a retired US Army Sergeant Major. He has a special interest in early aviation in Rochester.