The Heginbotham House: a banker's home that became Holyoke's library

If you visit the library in Holyoke, take a moment to notice the building itself. The town’s public library has been housed since the 1960s in a 1920s home built for a local banker, and the structure has its own story.

The house was built for Will E. Heginbotham, who ran a local bank and was active in town affairs. Contractor work began around 1919, and the red-brick home, with its half-timbered gable ends and late Craftsman styling, was finished in the early 1920s. Years later it became the town’s library, which is why a small Eastern Plains community reads and checks out books inside what was once a private residence. History Colorado tracks it as a documented historic property of Phillips County.

For a newcomer, the building is a quiet window into the county’s early-1900s farm-and-rail economy: a banker prosperous enough to build a fine home in a young plains town, on land settled only a few decades earlier. It is the kind of place that helps explain how these communities grew.

If you want the building’s full preservation history and its exact register status, History Colorado is the place to look. Start with the History Colorado page for the W.E. Heginbotham House.