Our community depends on our library. Our library depends on us.
The Mandel Public Library offers life-changing programs, services, and resources to children, teens, and adults in our community, all free of charge thanks to the financial support provided by the West Palm Beach Library Foundation.
When you support the Foundation, you make our community a better place to live, work, and play! Here’s how you can help.
Did You Know?
Begun as a tiny reading room in 1895, the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach has grown and evolved into a bustling, digital-era center serving citizens of all ages and interests with books, performances, classes, research, entertainment, technology, music and more. Public funds simply can’t cover it all. So, in 2000, our founders created the West Palm Beach Library Foundation to support the library’s continued success.
Free Reading Room (1895)
1895 as the West Palm Beach Reading Room in the Congregational Church at the corner of Datura and Olive Streets.
Memorial Library
The City’s first permanent library was an artistic Spanish style building facing the Intracoastal Waterway.
West Palm Beach Public Library (1960’s)
In the 1960’s, a new City library designed by architect Norman Robson was dedicated and opened with much flourish and public comment over its modern, colorful, exterior frieze panels.
Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach (2009)
In 2009, the library moved from the waterfront to its present facility at City Center in downtown West Palm Beach, and in 2012, the Mandel Foundation awarded a $5 million grant to the West Palm Beach Library Foundation for the enhancement of library programs and services.