Boston Public Library (first) opens.

It is located in two rooms on the first floor of the former Adams school on Mason Street, which by this time has become the Girls High and Normal School. It is the first free, large, municipal lending library in the U.S. The library’s reading room is open from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. every day except for Sunday and holidays. Its 16,000 books and periodicals are available to all residents 16 and older “of respectable character” with a personal reference from a citizen, who can take any one book for two weeks and renew it for the same period. The library moves to a new building (second) on Boylston Street in 1858,* and to its current building in Copley Square in 1895.*