Library services in the industrial town of Woodlawn had a humble beginning. Initiated by the Woodlawn Women's Club in 1920, a house to house canvas was conducted to determine the community's interest in a library. Encour­aged by a subscribed fund of $2791, a Library Association was formed at a public meeting. The Borough Council provided a room on the second floor of the Municipal Building with heat, light, shelving, tables, chairs, and janitor service. In January of 1921 the Woodlawn Free Library was opened to the public with a collection of 1,650 books. The popularity of this first library called for an expansion to two rooms within a short period of time.

In the progressive growth of the town of Woodlawn, the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation manifested its civic consciousness by giving substantial support to the com­munity's recreational, educational, and religious institu­tions. As a member of the Jones family and imbued with that spirit of community betterment, Mrs. Elizabeth Horne, in her November 9,1926 letter to the Borough Council, expressed concern about the limited library quarters for a growing community. She further stated that subject to certain conditions she would have erected for the people of Woodlawn a free, public and non-sectarian library.

The conditions contingent upon said project were that the Borough of Woodlawn would adequately support and maintain the library and that the property would be con­trolled and administered by a representative Board known as the Board of Directors of the B.F. Jones Memorial Library. Responding expeditiously, the Borough Council ordained and enacted into law on November 15, 1926, an acceptance of this magnanimous offer. The presentation and dedication of the library on February 1, 1929, was a memorable day in the institutional growth of this community.

The Library is a one-story "restrained-Italian-Renaissance-style" stone structure with a full basement, measuring 132 by 72 feet, with the long elevation facing Franklin Avenue. The 15, OOO-sq.-ft. building is located at 663 Franklin Avenue, the primary street in downtown Aliquippa,a few blocks west of what was until recent decades the central business and shopping district, on the edge of the residential district.

The general massing of the building is very heavy. The limestone facade is flat and gives the visual impression of a very stable, formal building in which "important events" occur. The building's exterior is constructed of grey Indiana limestone. The roof line is decorated with an elaborate cast bronze cheneau. Carved in the wall face below the cheneau are the words: Philosophy, Biology, Astronomy, Fiction, History, Science, Painting, Music, Sculpture, Drama, Poetry, and Romance. The exterior doors
are constructed of bronze, with a decorative bronze gate across their glazed openings. The name B.F. Jones Memorial Library is carved above the doorway and is flanked by carved fasces and drape.

The principal ornamentation of the two front facades consists of four Ionic columns forming a recessed colonnade. The entablatures above them are decorated with elaborate spiral carvings. Three large (6x 13 feet) bronze-frame windows are found behind the recessed columns on the front elevation. Flanking each set of windows are carved stone medallions measuring more than 3 feet in diameter. Additional triple windows are located on the side elevations.

Upon entering the building one encounters a statue of B. F. Jones, founder of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Constructed of bronze, the larger-than life size Jones sculpture rests upon a base of green Vermont marble. It is the work of Robert Aiken, a celebrated New York City artist. The ceiling of this memorial foyer is a reproduction of an Italian ceiling constructed of elaborate ornamental plaster. The memorial foyer is separated from the central lobby by three glass filled colonnade arches, through two of which are glass and bronze doors.

In the major interior spaces of the building, travertine was used on the floors and sometimes on the walls of the reading rooms; the balance of the walls and the ceiling are of plaster. The ceiling in the Reading Room also contains very decorative high-relief ornamental plaster in the Renaissance style, while the plaster in the Reference Room ceiling is made to simulate beams and is painted to represent gum wood. Marble and decorative plaster wall medallions are foundin the reading room, with della Robbia medallions in the Reference Room. The latter room, originally designed as a Children's Room, also features a drinking fountain with a cherub-and-goose sculpture in the della Robbia colors.

The interior doors are of solid mahogany and brass. Wrought iron screens separate the lobby from the Reference and Reading Rooms. One outstanding architectural feature is the carved cast stone doorway leading from the Reference Room into the original Story Hour Room, now the Director's Office. The doorway is an Italian Renaissance reproduction, to which has been added a frieze of children at play. On entering through this doorway one faces a wide leaded glass window in which are ten colored medallions depicting Mother Goose rhymes, the work of Henry Hunt ofPittsburgh.

A portrait of the donor, Mrs. Elisabeth McMasters (Jones) Horne, by
Alfred Hoen, a Dutch portrait painter, hangs in the Reference Room. One reaches the lower level by means of a travertine staircase decorated with Italianate bronze panels. The two public rooms on the lower level, designed to function as an exhibition hall and gallery, have been turned over to the Children's Department.

Mrs. Horne envisioned the library's purpose as twofold: to serve the educational andcultural needs of white-collar workers who had been brought to Aliquippa from urbanized areas where libraries were an expected community resource, and to serve the needs of an immigrant population who were encouraged to settle in the area to be the labor force for the steel making plant. As the makeup of the community's
population has changed over the years, the library has continued to be responsive to the needs of residents.

Because of its outstanding architecture, the library building is listed in the
Pennsylvania Inventory of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Places.

-from the "Architectural Biography" available for the public as a handout in the Reference Room of the library