Named in honor of her grandfather, Major John Jermain, the Greek classical revival building was designed by Augustus N. Allen.

Soon after she was hired, English classes for immigrants were also offered, along with cultural activities, lectures, exhibits, and starting in 1917, Victrola listening nights.

[4][5] In 1911, Sage helped finance local pharmacist and Algonquian linguist William Wallace Tooker’s book Indian Place-Names on Long Island.

When the library was restored in 2016, the crack was inlayed with bonded bronze to preserve the physical remnants of that moment in history.

[10] In 1978, Dorothy Ingersoll Zaykowski began working at the library and was put in charge of organizing the History Room, which had been left without a dedicated caretaker since Russella Hazard’s retirement in 1970.

[5] By the 1990s, water leaked through the Guastavino dome, the plumbing was in poor condition, the original bricks began to crumble, it did not have an elevator, and every corner of the building was overflowing with materials.

In 2004, a group called the John Jermain Future Fund attempted to purchase the crumbling house next door on Union Street.

[15] In 2009, Sag Harbor voters approved $10 million dollars for the restoration and expansion of the original aging building.

Hundreds of locals lined the street to pass former History Room librarian Dorothy Ingersoll Zaykowski’s book Sag Harbor: The Story of An American Beauty from one person to another.