South Dennis Free Public Library

We love all the libraries in Dennis. This one has a great history and is supper cute.
We drove by this location for years, thinking it’s too small to bother with even though it is very close to our house. Stupid us. It’s bigger than it looks with a nice selection if you’re a browser. Plus their DVD collection is like a walk back in time — good movies you’d love to show your kids but forgot about long ago. You know, the ones with acting and suspense, less on the special effects.
If you spend any time on the cape consider getting a library card. Most of the towns are part of the CLAMS network (yes that is the name —
) The selection is excellent and they do inter-​library runs daily.

A
gingerbread
library
This wonderful library in a sort of Gingerbread American Gothic style was built about 1856. But nobody is absolutely sure where it came from. Most people think that it was brought here from somewhere else. A campground in Yarmouth perhaps or maybe even Martha’s Vineyard. Others think that is was built on site by John Rose, the first owner of the diminutive house.
Where ever it came from the house was put to a lot of different uses. Over the decades It was a cobbler shop, a poetess home, a place for prayer meetings. It didn’t become a library until 1918.
It was so small that the books were piled everywhere and the patrons had to dig around to find what they were looking for. The library didn’t even have electricity until the 1950s.
A «huge» addition was constructed in the early 1960s but it still is a small library by any standards. A wonderfully unique and lovely library that looks like it was plucked right out of the past.

My favorite library. Great librarian, great little spot! It’s quiet and chill.