Marian Fell Library — Fellsmere, Florida

The Marian Fell Library at 63 North Cypress Street is the oldest library in Indian River County, opened to the public on May 1, 1915 (Florida historical marker).

The small frame building is still a working library. The Indian River County Library System counts the Fellsmere building among its libraries; the county page also names the Main branch downtown in Vero Beach, the Sebastian branch it calls North, and the Brackett Library on the Mueller Campus of Indian River State College (Indian River County Library). The county page gives the Fellsmere branch phone as (772) 783-6950 and its hours as Tuesday and Thursday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Card rules and borrowing policies are set by the county system.

The building has been in the National Register of Historic Places since October 8, 1996, under the Fellsmere multiple property listing, as NRIS 96001059 at 63 N. Cypress St. (NPGallery NRIS record). The Keeper amended the nomination when listing it, deleting Community Planning and Development as an area of significance and adding Social History in its place (National Register nomination, page 1).

The City of Fellsmere names the library among the town's firsts, describing the Marian Fell Library as the first library and a landmark that can still be visited today (City of Fellsmere).

Marian Fell, a daughter of Fellsmere developer Nelson Fell, paid for the library with royalties from her English translations of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov (state marker).

Born in 1886 in Cornwall, New York, Marian Fell was schooled privately in the United States, Paris and Russia (National Register nomination, page 8). The nomination introduces her as one of the daughters of E. Nelson Fell, a mining engineer, and says she was nearly as widely traveled as her father. She spent nearly ten years at the family home in Narcoossee on East Lake Tohopekaliga in Osceola County, then moved with the family in 1898 to Siberia, where she stayed four years and learned Russian well enough to translate plays and stories while still a student.

Between 1912 and 1916, Scribner's published five translations by the future namesake of the Fellsmere library, some of the first Russian literature to appear in English (National Register nomination, page 8).

Fellsmere drew her in through her father's project, which she often visited (National Register nomination, page 8). There she met Patrick Vans Agnew, the Kissimmee attorney who handled the legal affairs of the Fellsmere Farms Company and served as Fellsmere's first city attorney; they married in 1914 and settled in Winter Park. She never lived in Fellsmere, yet the marker says the Fell family is believed to have lived directly across Cypress Street from the library from 1915 to 1917 (marker 710).

The Fellsmere Library Association, formed in October 1914, built the library with Marian Fell's royalties and finished the building in April 1915 (National Register nomination, page 9).

Marian Fell gave her publication royalties to the association to promote literacy and culture in Fellsmere, and the association was set up for building a library and buying books (National Register nomination, page 8). The National Register study of the whole town records the same October 1914 start for the association (Fellsmere MPS, page 8).

At the dedication, Patrick Vans Agnew gave the opening remarks and Senator Nathan P. Bryan delivered the principal address (National Register nomination, page 9). The association named the building for Marian Fell in thanks, and the Fellsmere Farms Company deeded it the property soon after completion. The marker gives May 1, 1915 as the day the doors opened to the public.

Membership in the Fellsmere Library Association cost a small fee, but the reading room was open to the whole town (National Register nomination, page 9). By 1918 the association had seventy-six members, $275 in revenue and a collection of about 1,700 books, and it circulated several thousand books a year, publishing lists of new acquisitions with credit to each donor.

The Marian Fell Library is a one-story, 800 square foot frame building with stucco walls and a hip roof, set on rough face cast block piers on North Cypress Street (National Register nomination, page 4).

It stands one block north of County Road 512, midway between Colorado and New York avenues, with the historic downtown two blocks east (National Register nomination, page 4). The main facade faces west onto North Cypress Street under a slightly projecting gabled portico carried on two simple Tuscan columns, with French doors flanking a tall fixed window; one side of the old front steps is now a ramp.

Two shed-roofed additions extend from the east side of the Fellsmere library: a kitchen built in 1930 with pressed metal walls (National Register nomination, page 4) and a restroom built in 1940 with wood drop siding (National Register nomination, page 5). Inside, the single reading room keeps twelve-foot plaster ceilings, the original hanging light fixtures, built-in shelving on the north wall, a fireplace on the south wall and original brass door hardware.

The National Register nomination calls the Marian Fell Library representative of library buildings developed in small Florida towns in the early twentieth century, when purpose-built book rooms replaced libraries tucked into halls or theaters (National Register nomination, page 10). The listed property covers lots 21 to 26 of Block 101, with landscaped lots running north to New York Avenue to give the building a park-like setting (National Register nomination, page 12).

The Marian Fell Library also served as a popular Fellsmere gathering place, used for lectures, recitals, public meetings, canning demonstrations, flower shows and bird shows (National Register nomination, page 9).

Officers of the Florida Audubon Society, the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs and the Florida State Board of Health lectured in the Fellsmere building, and area women's clubs met there (National Register nomination, page 9). The marker adds that north of the library lay two grass tennis courts of the Fellsmere Tennis Association, where the 1916 Fell Cup was played (marker 710).

Membership fell through the 1920s and 1930s, years of little growth in Fellsmere, and because volunteers ran the library its hours usually came to four to eight a week (National Register nomination, page 9). The association also reached into the schools: in 1926 a Parent-Teacher Association was organized at the Fellsmere Public School with its help (Fellsmere Public School nomination, page 9).

By the 1996 nomination the Fellsmere Library Association still kept books, periodicals and historical materials in the building, and a small 1980s grant from the Division of Historical Resources paid to repair the chimney and roof (National Register nomination, page 9). The 2010 marker notes that the Cypress Street library has been used for readings, recitals, meetings, social events and children's programs since it opened (state marker).