The Warren County Public Library traces back to 1868, when a reading room opened with nothing but newspapers and magazines. A charter followed in 1870, the same year library trustee William Pressly funded a two-story brick building on Public Square to house it, a building that still carries a marble plaque reading, “This was the first building in the State of Illinois given for a People’s Library.” In 1907, a new main library building went up right next to it, on land Pressly donated as well.
The library has been renovated and expanded several times since, most recently in the 1990s and mid-2000s and remains a full public library today, on the same block of Public Square it’s occupied for over 150 years.