With its fine oak paneling imported from the Caucasus, as well as a substantial table and chairs (the originals now removed), the Board Room was originally intended to serve as a conference room for the Library Board - the group of women who were so dedicated to the library and worked tirelessly for its causes.
On the exterior wall hangs a framed painting of Emma (Mrs Frederick) Shaw, one of the founding members of the original library in Elmwood, and long-time President of the Elmwood Library Association. Mrs Shaw was one of many pioneering women all over the country, particularly those married to successful businessmen before women were able to vote, who organized themselves in the service of social causes, ranging from sanitation and temperance to education and votes for women. In Providence alone, for example, a committee of women was responsible in 1877 for establishing the Rhode Island School of Design; within a year of the time the Elmwood Public Library Association came together, Gertrude Johnson and Mary Wales opened a school to expand business opportunities primarily for women.
Mrs Shaw organized and solicited her friends and neighbors for one dollar subscriptions to establish the Elmwood Public Library Association, and subsequently, a library was opened on the second floor of the Greenwich Street Fire Station in the neighborhood. The framed, original certificate of incorporation of the Association, dated March 22, 1916, can be viewed on the shelf. The city paid for renovations and covered the rent for the library to open in July 1915, for three afternoons a week, and on Saturdays until 9pm. The book collection of the first library, which began with just 1,000 books, was eventually transferred and greatly expanded in Knight Memorial.
The stained glass windows feature medallions representative of the world’s great poets, writers and philosophers: Socrates (philosophy), Christ (religion) , Phidias (classical sculpture), Orpheus (music), Michelangelo (Renaissance sculpture), Shakespeare (dramatic verse), Galileo (science), Homer (epic poetry).
The Board Room also acknowledges several great literary figures in the form of sculpted busts: Ralph Ellison, Robert Frost, Eugene O’Neill, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells and Virginia Woolf.
