The Newark Public Library — located at 5 Washington Street in downtown Newark, New Jersey — was built in 1899 with a design inspired by a 15th century Florence palazzo. It is reportedly New Jersey’s most comprehensive public library, serving thousands of patrons per week and providing equal access to vast educational, cultural, literary, historical, and digital resources. The library’s major departments include its Reference Center, Special Collections which includes graphic and visual arts, the Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center, the New Jersey Hispanic Research and Information Center, and the James Brown African American Room, and the LGBTQ Resource Center.
Newark, New Jersey-born American writer Philip Roth notably left his entire personal library of approximately 7,000 volumes, books accumulated by him from 1950 foreward to the Newark Public Library. The Philip Roth Personal Library is currently housed on the second floor of the Main Library next to Centennial Hall. Many books bear Roth’s handwritten comments, notes, and underlinings and will be accessible for study and perusal. The PRPL also provides members of the reading community, students particularly, with an opportunity to become familiar with the intellectual and imaginative works that sustained his mind and his work along with the books that served as reference and source material for any number of his novels.