Special by Lindsay Hajek, assistant director of Main Street and Destination Seguin
(Seguin) — This September, the Seguin Public Library will celebrate 10 years on Nolte Street with a month of special events and activities. The anniversary marks a decade in its current location, but more importantly, it celebrates how the library has grown alongside the community it serves.
The library’s history dates to 1930, when its first official library was housed in a secondhand China cabinet in city offices. As demand grew, it moved into a small room at City Hall, where it remained for more than 30 years.
The library moved to College Street in 1965 and continued serving Seguin and Guadalupe County for more than five decades. By 2016, however, the building had reached its limits. There was little room to expand collections, technology or programming, and parking had become a major challenge. Community studies supported the need for a new library, and the Nolte Street location became part of a 2013 bond election.
Silvia Christy, Library Director, who will mark 27 years with the Seguin Public Library in November, has worked at both the College Street and Nolte Street libraries and watched generations grow and learn. She remembers leaving the College Street building with former Library Director Jacki Gross. The two were the last staff members to leave.
“It almost felt like a captain and second in command going down with the ship,” Christy said. “It was sad but at the same time exciting for all the new possibilities.”
Since opening in its current location in 2016, the library has welcomed nearly 1.5 million visitors and provided dedicated programming spaces, public meeting rooms, expanded collections and new technology. Over the past decade, more than 5,400 programs and events have drawn nearly 170,000 attendees, while patrons have borrowed more than 2.8 million items.
Programming has grown from 261 events in 2016 to 608 in 2025. This year, the Summer Reading Program reached a record 2,350 participants, surpassing the previous record of 1,611 set in 2024.
The building has earned recognition of its own, including LEED Gold certification, the TEXO Distinguished Building Award, a Best of Texas Award from ENR, the Project of the Year Award from the American Subcontractors Association, San Antonio Chapter, and the President’s Award for Best Public Improvement from the Texas Downtown Association.
But some of the library’s most meaningful memories cannot be measured in numbers.
Hannah Farmer, Assistant Library Director, started with the Seguin Public Library in 2014 as the Youth Services Librarian. When the College Street library closed in July 2016 ahead of the new library’s opening, Farmer continued holding storytime on the lawn, giving families a familiar early literacy opportunity while staff prepared the new building for its opening. Farmer arrived with books and puppets, but one important character was missing.
“I was searching my packed boxes for my butterfly and spider puppet that I used for two of the songs,” Farmer recalled. “The spider was nowhere to be found. I improvised a new verse: ‘The scaly alligator climbed up the waterspout, down came the rain and washed the gator out,’ which was a big hit,” she said.
The alligator became a storytime favorite for years.
The mystery of the missing spider was eventually solved. The staff member who packed Farmer’s office had accidentally donated it, along with other items, to Goodwill.
“Oops!” Farmer said.
It is a small story, but it captures something much bigger about the library. Buildings change, collections grow and technology evolves, but the moments that stay with people are often the simplest ones: a child discovering a favorite story, a family gathering for a program or a staff member finding a way to keep the story going.
Those moments have continued throughout the library’s 10 years on Nolte Street, and now the library is celebrating its anniversary in the way it knows best: by bringing people together.
September events include Birthday Party Storytime from 11 a.m. to noon Sept. 5; an Anniversary Proclamation and Reception at 5 p.m. Sept. 8, preceded by a Friends of the Library business meeting at 4:30 p.m.; Library MiniCon from 12 to 4 p.m. Sept. 19; and Folklorico and Mariachi from 1 to 2 p.m. Sept. 26, followed by an outdoor concert featuring Los Souldees from 7 to 8:30 p.m.