According to Mr. Bayard H. Christy in a report prepared for the Home and School Association of Sewickley on November 8, 1912, the Sewickley Public Library owes its origins to the arrival of a whiskey boat at the Saw Mill landing one Saturday evening in the winter of 1872-73.
In 1923 the library formally moved to its present location, a building given by Mr. William L. Clause in memory of his wife Elizabeth Ann Clause.