History

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The Waldwick Public Library was founded in 1940 by the Men's Community Club of Waldwick. Its first home was a room about the size of a classroom in the basement of the Prospect Street School. Volunteers built shelves, collected and catalogued books, and accepted donations of furniture for the fledgling library. The population in Waldwick in  1940 was 2,475.

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By 1950, the population had grown to 3,963 and the school could no longer guarantee the library full-time use of its facilities. The Woman's Club of Waldwick undertook as its project the "Expansion of the Facilities of the Public Library" and established a library fund. The Borough Council set aside a piece of land at the corner of Prospect Street and Stanley Place for the construction of a new library building. Over the next five years, a successful fundraising drive was completed and Andrew Politis, architect, was hired to design the new building. The $19,000 one-story structure, constructed in part from sandstone blocks salvaged from the old Bamper Hotel, was dedicated on June 24, 1956.

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Five major additions to the building have been required to keep pace with the steadily increasing demand for library services in Waldwick. The first addition to the library, made possible by funds raised by the Lion's Club and Woman's Club, was dedicated in 1965 and put into service as the children's room. Further additions were made in 1972, at a cost of $25,000, and in 1980 at a cost of $61,505. The former provided space for the library's growing collection; the latter provided a multipurpose room used for library programs, meetings, and storage. The 2003 expansion and renovation project provided additional space for collections, programs, children's services, and offices for library staff. In October of 2012, the community celebrated the completion of a $400,000 building project that doubled the size of the meeting room, created a local history archives and gallery, and provided a space for quiet study.

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As a member of the Bergen County Cooperative Library System, the Waldwick Public Library shares resources with more than seventy other public libraries in northern New Jersey. The BCCLS reciprocal borrowing program allows Waldwick residents to use hometown library cards in libraries in neighboring towns or have materials from other libraries delivered to the Waldwick Public Library.