Another stop on the Montgomery County PA library tour! If you want to know what I am talking about, look here.

On January 21, my husband and I visited the Royersford Free Public Library. It’s located in Royersford, PA, a town about 30 miles northwest from my house. It’s about 10 miles southeast of Pottstown, which you may remember from an earlier library tour visit. I’ve never been to this location, since as you might expect, it’s not on my usual round of daily travel.

The borough of Royersford is an old town located on the banks of the Schuylkill River (at a ford named for a nearby family, the Royers! I love to find out facts like that). It had a variety of manufacturing operations in the past but today is more of a town tied in the needs with the growing residential population of this area of the county. The main street still has a nice array of solid old buildings, many now repurposed, but in use. The town was busy when we visited with street and pedestrian traffic.

The library is located inside the borough limits on a side street in a former elementary school.

This library is a branch of the main county library at Norristown (as was the Upper Perkiomen Valley library visited earlier). Both of these libraries are small and function under the supervision of the main library. I wasn’t able to find any info about the history of this library, so I’ll simply report my observations.

As I said, this building is a former elementary school. We were interested to see that originally there were three entrances to the building, the main center one (now the library entrance, and one at each end of the building. The one on the right was designated as “Kindergarten” and the one on the left was “Library”. The building is dated 1929 over the center entrance, which also is signed as “Grade School”).

My guess is that in the past, the library for the school and the town were the same, since the space was accessible without going into the school, and it was clearly signed (though I forgot to get a photo of it). But I don’t know any of this for a fact, I’m just guessing.

All right, let’s go inside. Here’s the view as we came in the little hall. The circulation desk is straight ahead.

Once inside, the layout of the library is simple. The back wall of classrooms is now open and that is where the books are shelved. Two front classrooms are still separate, one a community room and one a part of the children’s section. The long wing at the “Library” entrance is another children’s section. Here are pictures where I am standing at the end of what was the central hall looking to the children’s section.

I introduced myself to the library assistant, and then we proceeded to look around. I was interested to see that the classroom doors still had their numbers:

I also liked the decorated ceiling tiles throughout the building:

As you can see, the library is small and it doesn’t have space to sit down and write in the adult section, so I decided to do another session of writing from the inspiration of book titles. I carried my notebook around and let the books tell me what to write. Then I checked out a few books and off we went, having had a very pleasant experience here.

Here are a few haiku I wrote at this location:

1236.
The man of my dreams.
Friends forever he tells me.
No solace in that.
1/21/23

1239.
Undistinguished guests.
Strangers drawing conclusions.
My smile is so thin.
1/21/23

1240.
This garden. Hidden
in the shadow of the bee
a hand shapes your fate
1/21/23

All right, that’s it for the Royersford Free Public Library. Thank you for being here for all of us readers!