Hoyt Library: a New York lumber baron's $100,000 dare

The heavy stone library on Janes Avenue in Saginaw exists because a New York businessman left exactly enough money to start it and not a dollar more — on purpose. Jesse Hoyt had real estate and lumber interests up and down the Saginaw Valley, and when he wrote his will in June 1882 he set aside $100,000 to build a library on a lot he already owned. He capped the gift deliberately, the story goes, so that if the citizens really wanted the place to thrive they’d have to reach into their own pockets to support it. He died that August, on the twelfth.

The building they put up is a serious piece of architecture. The trustees handed the job to the Boston firm of Van Brunt and Howe, who built it in the heavy Romanesque style that was the height of fashion — squat arches, thick walls, and big rough-faced blocks of Bay Port limestone hauled in from the quarries near the tip of the Thumb. Red sandstone from Lake Superior country trims the doors and windows. A competing design from the great H.H. Richardson himself was reportedly turned down along the way.

Work started in 1887, and Hoyt Library opened its doors on November 1, 1890, stocked with more than 20,000 books, a lecture hall, and meeting rooms. For a city that was still mostly sawmills and mud, that was a statement.

It has never stopped being a library. More than a century and a quarter on, you can still climb the steps, push through the heavy doors, and dig into the local-history and genealogy collections that draw researchers from all over. Hoyt’s dare worked: the town kept its end of the bargain.