POUGHKEEPSIE – A new library at the Family Partnership Center (FPC) in North Hamilton Street has opened to the public. The FPC is located in the same building that formerly housed the Poughkeepsie High School for years and was later used as the Our Lady of Lourdes High School.
The Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Branch Library occupies the same space that both high schools used as their library, in room 224.
On Monday, Library District Director Tom Lawrence met with Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18) in the new library branch named for Delaney who attended the Poughkeepsie High School when it was in the FPC building. Sadie Peterson Delaney went on to serve as Chief Librarian at the Veterans Administration Hospital Library in Tuskegee, Alabama, where her work in Bibliotherapy received international attention.
Lawrence told Maloney that the branch will have a particular focus on early literacy as an important developmental step for children, and will assist in providing programming for residents of the city’s north side. The library director noted that the FPC, and the library, are within walking distance of the area’s two elementary schools, Morse Elementary and Warring Elementary.
The original African Roots Library collection that occupied this space is curated through a partnership between the Library Action Committee and the Poughkeepsie Public Library District. The collection was established to give African-Americans an extensive collection of material that affords readers the opportunity to research their roots back to Africa.
Hours for the branch are Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 1 pm to 5 pm and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday: 10 am to 2 pm. Programs will ramp up in the months to come.
