Cobb County Public Library has created a virtual tour of its newly renovated Gritters Library branch.

The tour includes audio narration.

According to the announcement for the virtual tour:

Discover the all-new Gritters Library building online! Tour the serene reading room, vibrant spaces for all ages, and learn about the exciting features of our new library. Accessible on all devices, the virtual library offers quick links, text translations in 100+ languages, and text reader options.

Click here to enter the virtual tour of the Gritters Library

About Gritters Library

The Gritters Library is located in Shaw Park at 800 Shaw Park Road.

The original Gritters branch of the Cobb Public Library system opened on November 19, 1973.

The renovation of the building was included in the 2016 SPLOST, but it soon became evident that renovation of the obsolete structure was impossible, and a new building was needed.

According to the county’s August 2021 news release, the Cobb County Board of Commissioners accepted a $1.9 million grant from the Georgia Public Library Service to replace the obsolete and aging building.

In June of 2023, the old Gritters Library was closed in preparation for the new building.

The library was named after the Gritters 911th Militia District, organized in 1939, just seven years after the Georgia legislature created Cobb County.  

The origin of the name Gritters is unknown, but it’s speculated that it was named for a grist mill in the area.

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.des audio narration.