History

The Plymouth Public Library has served Plymouth, Wisconsin, since 1871.  A timeline of our growth is below.

1871

The Hub Club raised funds to purchase books for its members. Membership dues were 25 cents per year.

1900

The Woman’s Relief Corps established the first public reading room.

1913

Plymouth purchased the land for the present library location. Funds for the purchase came from $3,001 raised by the Plymouth’s Woman’s Club, a $10,000 Andrew Carnegie grant, and the City of Plymouth.

1915

The new library location opened in 1915. The building was 5,400 square feet and cost $12,500. During this time, Plymouth’s population was 3,100. The library served 1,864 cardholders (943 adults and 921 juveniles) and housed 4,079 books.

1984

The City Council approved a master plan to expand and upgrade the existing library.

1988

The Plymouth Public Library board was awarded a $125,000 LSCA (Library Construction and Service Act) Title II grant. The library expanded its building to 16,790 total square feet and moved its main entrance from E Main Street to Division Street.

2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the library quickly adapted to continue to provide services to the Plymouth and Sheboygan County community. The library provided curbside services, added digital services, and hosted virtual programs.

As a part of the Summer Reading Program, the library challenged the community to build the longest paper chain ever made in Plymouth. To build the chain, readers were asked to report their reading throughout the summer. For every 25 pages read, a new chain was added to the community-wide paper chain. The final chain ended up being 34,047 chains long. On Tuesday, August 25, 2020, a group of volunteers carried the paper chain from the Antoinette the Cow statue until we were forced to stop at Highway 57. Library staff jokes that we could have stretched the chain to unite Antoinette with the Bull statue on the other side of Highway 57.