Located in the foothills of the Berkshires, Huntington’s public library serves a rural population and surrounding communities at the edge of Hampden and Hampshire Counties. Our primary mission is to provide quality reading, viewing, and listening for our patrons as well as support for those seeking independent learning opportunities and formal education.

The Library, Bridging the Gap

Excerpt taken from History of Huntington, Massachusetts 1976-2000 by Lori Belhumeur

A focal point of the naming of our town, the Huntington Public Library continues to be an integral part of its history. Just as Huntington’s 100th birthday party in July 1955 included dedication of a new Town Hall on [then] Park Street, the celebration of our nation’s 200th birthday in 1976 included dedication of the current library building on East Main Street. 

Originally housed in a store which burned in 1859, the matter of a public library went untended until 1891 when the town accepted a state grant of $100 “to any town without a public library” to purchase books, along with its own annual appropriation of $25 for use and maintenance. The library opened in 1893 in the front room of the Town Hall with 306 books. In 1900 it relocated to two rooms over the Cross Pharmacy on Main Street and, in 1912, when New England Telephone & Telegraph Company needed the rooms, its then 2,000 books were moved to the front downstairs room of Murrayfield School, built in 1892.

The Huntington Public Library, 2019

In 1923 the school needed the space, and the library occupied one room in a two-room building once used as an Episcopal Chapel. The Pettis Fund [a gift of $30,000 in railroad stocks presented to the town in 1920 by successful investor and former resident Alphonso Percival Pettis, then of Paris, France] assumed maintenance and rental costs, including use of the second room in 1925. 

In the early 1930s the town built an extension onto Huntington High School, erected in 1907, to accommodate the library. After Gateway Regional High School was opened in 1963, the old high school building could no longer provide the utilities needed for the few hours the library was open. So once again it moved, to totally inadequate quarters in part of the Murrayfield Elementary School. The old high school was subsequently demolished, and the current Huntington Public Library building was erected on its site in 1975. (A piece of the rock lintel bearing the school's name, used in a Maple Street stone wall built in 1987, is one of the high school’s few remains.) 

A Friends of the Huntington Public Library support group was organized in November 1995 to conduct fundraisers with which to provide equipment, programs and other aid not allowed within the library’s town-allotted budget.

Today, the library houses over 6,000 volumes plus video and audiobooks, with access to millions more via the Central and Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing Network (CW MARS) and the Libby app. One desktop computer and three Chromebooks are on hand for public use, along with a new Konica Minolta printer and scanner. The library hosts general interest programs, a weekly story hour, and a summer reading program during its 26 hours of operation over six days of the week. A portrait of Judge Charles Huntington hangs behind the circulation desk and is referenced often by visitors to the library.