By request of the School Committee, the West Concord Branch Library has been moved during the past year from the two rooms on the lower floor of the West Concord school building, where it has hitherto been housed, to a single room directly over them on the second floor. This transfer has been made at considerable expense to the Library, aggregating about $446.97.

Some details of the transfer, with incidental changes, are indicated in the annexed reports of the Treasurer and the Librarian.

Considerations devolving upon the Library incident to the problems suggested by such changes and transfers, relative to ways and means to provide for additional housing and service facilities to meet the growing needs of the Library, include the availability of the lot of land owned by the Town at the corner of Main and Church Streets, directly opposite the schoolhouse; and the ultimate or proximate possibility or expediency of obtaining the library facilities provided for by the will of Loring N. Fowler.

Mr. Fowler’s estate, amounting to about $100,000, is held by Messrs. Henry F. Smith and C. Hayden Whitney as Trustees.

We are ready to purchase the library lot on the corner of Main and Church Streets and erect a building thereon, provided the Town is willing to pay four per cent interest on the cost of land and building, plus the expense of fuel and janitor service, until the death of the survivor of Mr. Fowler’s widow and daughter, who, under the terms of his will, are entitled to the income of his estate during their lives, and such parts of the principal as they may need for their comfortable support and maintenance.

A bill has been introduced in the Legislature allowing the Town to pay such interest. General Laws, chapter 40, section 4, allows towns to pay such interest where a gift is made to a town to come to it on the death of some person. Mr. Fowler’s bequest is to the Library Corporation and not to the Town, hence the necessity of special legislation.

There are articles in the warrant to accomplish the desired result and a copy of the proposed act is appended.

The Corporation expended for fuel, light and water in 1928:

For the Main Library    
Fuel and Water $786.90  
Light for 1926, 1927, 1928, 1,736.02 $2,522.92
For the West Concord Branch  
Fuel and Light, 458.04
    $2,980.96

We therefore recommend that that sum be appropriated and paid to the Corporation for maintenance and care of the Library and its West Concord Branch during the year 1929.

William Wheeler,

President

Draft of Proposed Act

The Town of Concord is hereby authorized to contract to pay to the Concord Free Public Library interest on the cost, not exceeding $30,000, of a branch library building and a site therefor in that part of said Concord called West Concord until the death of the survivor of the widow and daughter of Loring N. Fowler, such interest not to exceed four per centum per annum, provided however that the inhabitants of Concord have free access to and the use of said building and library.