Esther A. Barlow Collection

Esther A. Barlow was born in 1904 in Elbow Lake, Minnesota and grew up in Calmar, Iowa. After graduating from high school in 1922, she moved with her family to Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota for two years. She then moved to Illinois and entered Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1927 she graduated from the Liberal Arts Course there and was hired by the Chicago Public Library.

During the first four years of her forty-nine year career with the Chicago Public Library, she served at the Holstein, Albany Park and Rogers Park branches. In 1931, soon after the opening of Hild Regional Library, she was appointed to the children's department there. From 1942-1955 she was the children's librarian at Lake View Branch. In 1955 she returned to Hild to become the Head of Children's Services and remained there until her retirement in 1976.

Esther Barlow served three generations of Northsiders during her years at Chicago Public Library. During her twenty-one years as Head of Children's Services at Hild, she was also responsible for training over one hundred beginning children's librarians who served in CPL branches throughout the city. She also held weekly story hours and extended programming to youngsters at Children's Memorial Hospital. The story-telling room at Sulzer Regional Library is named in her honor.

Esther Barlow made her home on the north side, living for twenty-four years with her aunt Petra Marie Dahl (1878-1951, a practicing physician in 1916) at 4264 North Milwaukee Avenue. She remained on the north side even after her retirement and died in October 1983.