Library Company of Philadelphia

The Library Company of Philadelphia is a research library in Center City, Philadelphia, with 500,000 books and 70,000 additional objects such as manuscripts, maps, and rare printed materials from the colonial era. The collection spans several floors in a building on Locust Street and covers works on American literature, history, and science from the 17th through the 19th centuries.

Benjamin Franklin established this subscription library in 1731 with fifty members who each contributed forty shillings to purchase books from England. The organization survived the Revolution and expanded its holdings through donations from prominent Philadelphians in the early 19th century.

Scholars from around the world come here to examine rare pamphlets and printed works that document daily life in colonial America. The reading room atmosphere supports focused work with original documents that carry handwritten notes from 18th-century readers.

Researchers need advance appointments to access materials at 1314 Locust Street, where the reading room operates Monday through Friday. Staff members help with navigating the catalogs and requesting books from storage areas, which can take some time to retrieve.

The collection contains 2,150 items that belonged to Benjamin Franklin, including his personal annotations and correspondence with colonial-era intellectuals. Many of the volumes Franklin annotated show his habit of questioning arguments in the margins or writing calculations beside scientific observations.