Kent Library

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

A local doctor proposed the library in 1919. He had grown troubled by people wandering the streets with nothing better to do, and his wife, a professional librarian, had shown him what a library could offer. A fund drive collected $4,264, enough for a small community center and library. The old post office store on First Avenue became the Red Cross Community Center. The library opened in a room there in August 1920 and checked out its first books. By its first anniversary it counted 740 card holders and 1,480 volumes. In 1922 it moved into the new city hall, and then came years of new buildings, finally the downtown one in 1991, built by Kent together with the King County Library System at a cost of $3.2 million. [1]