The grand opening of the new Gritters Library is set for Thursday, November 14, at 2 p.m., with a ribbon-cutting ceremony open to the public.

The ceremony is sponsored by the Cobb Library Foundation and hosted by the Cobb County Board of Commissioners, Cobb County Manager, Cobb County Public Library Board of Trustees, Cobb County Workforce Development and Cobb PARKS.

The event celebrates the library’s role as a resource hub for the local community.

Located at 880 Shaw Park Road, the new library replaces the original facility, which opened in 1973.

The site is off Canton Road, one mile north of the Piedmont Road intersection. 

Designed to serve a diverse community of approximately 65,000 people within a three-mile radius, the library will focus on literacy, education, workforce development, civic engagement, and health and wellness. It is situated next to Shaw Park.

It will officially open its doors to the public the week before the ribbon-cutting, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, November 6.

About the Cobb County Public Library

According to the Cobb County Public Library website:

Cobb County Public Library is a 15-branch system headquartered in Marietta, Georgia, where its staff members serve a diverse population of over 750,000 people. Cobb is one of Georgia’s fastest-growing counties, and Cobb County Public Library is dedicated to being a resource center in the community by providing equal access to information, materials, and services.

History of Cobb’s library system

The first public library in Cobb County was opened in the home of Sarah Freeman Clarke in Marietta. Clarke, whose family was from Massachusetts, was an advocate for free lending libraries and began lending books from her own collection informally from her house before it became obvious there needed to be a better-organized library system.

According to The First Hundred Years, A Short History of Cobb County in Georgia, by Sarah Blackwell Gober Temple, the library opened in 1882, was at Clarke’s residence on Whitlock Avenue, and was named the Franklin Library.

The first standalone library building opened on Church Street near the home of William Root in October 1893 and was named the Sarah Freeman Clarke Library.

Subsequently, libraries were opened in Acworth and Austell. In 1959, the city of Marietta and several other Cobb County libraries combined to form a countywide system that began the Cobb County Public Library as we know it today.

You can read more about the history of the Cobb County Public Library by following this link.