Bradford Mechanics' Institute Library

The Mechanics' Institute played a leading role in adult education in Bradford, providing books, classes and later, a series of very popular public lectures over a century.

[2] The Bradford Observer happily declared that the "Mechanics' Institute was the body best adapted and most likely to afford technical education so desirable in an industrial town like ours.

With shops and a newsroom at street level, a large library above surrounded by teaching rooms which could accommodate 700 students, a lecture theatre with raked seating for 1,500 people and, on the upper floor, an elegant restaurant.

The teaching rooms of the building were let to the city council for classes over-flowing from the college but, effectively, the Mechanics' Institute had lost its role as a provider of formal education.

[2] The Mechanics' Institute continued to attract the full cross section of Bradford society from clerks and engineers to merchants and wool barons.

It is said that, at the turn of the century, there were more Rolls-Royce owners in Bradford than any other city in the country and ladies could be seen arriving by chauffeured cars to take coffee or luncheon whilst their gentlemen would spend time in the smoking and reading rooms of the institute or on the trading floor of the nearby Wool Exchange.

Rents from ground floor shops and the letting of meeting rooms kept the institute financially solvent but the outbreak of war in 1939 led to harder times.

The majority of the titles are fiction although there is a particularly good stock of books on specialist subjects, such as both world wars, local history and poetry.

The institute continues to fulfil its objectives of the advancement of education of the inhabitants of the district of Bradford, and the provision of a library and facilities for study, and a room to be used for meetings and lectures.