Willard Library

The Library acquired the clerk’s desk in the 1950s from the Caden Stone Company, when that firm went out of business. The Caden Stone Company had been responsible for the stonework at Willard Library during the Library’s original construction in the late 1800s.

This copy of Gilbert Stuart’s “George Washington at Dorcester Heights” (which hangs at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) is believed to have been painted by William Edward West.

The painting has been with Willard Library since its opening, but how it came to the Library was a mystery until 1954.

At that time, Julia Evans Stephens Shea, a resident of Hollywood, California, and descendent of General Robert M. Evans, was visiting Evansville. During her stay, she read a newspaper article by Bish Thompson on the cleanup and minor restoration of the painting.

Shea claimed the painting was hers. She said it had once belonged to General Evans, who has passed it to his daughter, Julienne Evans Stephens. When the Stephens family moved from their country home into the city, they didn’t have room to display the painting. So Stephens loaned it to her cousin, Lou Scantlin, for display at the public library where Scantlin worked.

When Willard Library opened a few years later, the painting, along with the public library’s books, moved to Willard.

Shea was the only living heir to the painting in 1954, and she determined it should be left on display at Willard Library. It hangs there today.

J. Paul Wurtz is the photographer of these Willard Library images, taken in 1948.

The reading table and bench from Columbia school were a gift from Mrs. Sam Warren.

The depictions of Willard Library and other notable buildings of Evansville are from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 12, 1889.