The following is from the book produced by the County Borough of Birkenhead in 1974:
By 1877 the Libraries Department had already occupied three different premises. In 1856 a reading room was opened in Price Street and the town could boast that it was the first unincorporated Borough to take advantage of the 1850 Public Libraries Act. In May 1857 the books were removed to rooms over the new Post Office in Conway Street. By 1861, 130,000 visitors a year were reported, of whom 80,000 were noted as being of the 'working class'. Under this kind of pressure the libraries committee were forced to search for larger accommodation; a site was found in Hamilton Street and by April 1864 the town's first purpose built library was in use.
The revenue which was available from the extension of the boundaries in 1877 led to the purchase of many additional books. With the increased use made of the library, the growing population and the distance which residents in the newly incorporated districts had to travel to the library, the committee was obliged to examine the possibilities of opening branch libraries on the outskirts of the town. In 1894, North Branch Library, situated at the junction of Pensby Street and Price Street, and the South Branch in Grove Road, Rock Ferry were opened.
Ten years later with the undoubted success of the branches and the all too obvious inadequacies of the Central Library, the committee considered an approach to Andrew Carnegie, benefactor of many public libraries throughout the United Kingdom. He agreed to build a new Central Library at a cost of £15,000 and rebuild the two branches.
By 1909 all three buildings had been opened. The Central Library was generally recognized as being of outstanding merit architecturally, housing a lending, reference and children's department as well as a Reading Room and a Lecture Hall.
With the removal of the restriction of the Penny Rate in 1919 and the introduction of open access for readers in 1926 the Library Committee could view the future with assurance.
However, hopes of further progress were to be shattered by the decision of the powerful Mersey Joint Tunnel Committee to acquire the land the library stood on for the entrance to the new road Tunnel. Despite many vigorous protests, in 1929 the Library began to move its lending stock back to the 1864 Central Library building, while the reference stock was put in storage for five years in a disused canteen rented from Lairds.
Compensation worth £55,000 allowed for an ambitious new building and on 18July 1934 King George V drove through the new Mersey Tunnel to open the new central library.
The centre building in the picture above is the 1864 library, after the library left it was used as a museum upto 1928 when the Williamson Art Gallery was opened.