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 Follow the purple arrows on the signs as you walk

Massillon Public Library – 208 Lincoln Way East

The wing closest to Lincoln Way (the right side as you face the building) was originally the home of James and Eliza Duncan, built in the early 1830s.  James Duncan founded the city and his wife, Eliza, chose its name in honor of author and priest Jean Baptiste Massillon, who the bishop in the court of of French King Louis the 14th.

Frank Lee and Annie Steese Baldwin were the last residents of the Duncan home.  When she died in 1930, the community learned that she and Mr. Baldwin had decided to bequeath their historic home and a generous sum of money for a new library and/or museum.

During the Great Depression, the community passed a bond issue to help erect the central rotunda and dome and the reflecting wing as part of the federal government’s WPA program.  The Massillon Museum occupied the Duncan house before construction.  It returned in 1937 with the opening of the Library, and the two shared the building until 1995, when the Museum moved to its current location.

Today Massillon Public Library continues to reinvent itself to serve the ever-changing needs of the community.

Eliza Duncan
Annie Baldwin

Directions: Stay where you are and look toward The Farmers National Bank, which stands across Lincoln Way from the Library on the former site of a lovely early Massillon residence.