On July 21, 1891, the Manitowoc County Chronicle reported, “Work on the library building is now in progress” and on October 13, “The building for the Joseph Mann Library is nearly completed.” The two-story front-gabled frame library building was located on Lots 3 and 4, Block 72, south of Main (now Sixteenth) Street between Washington and Adams Streets. The total cost of construction, heater, furniture and books was $3,363.73.

M. Fellows, the President of the Jones Library Association stated, “In this age, books and newspapers are the great teachers. They bring us face to face with the best and wisest minds of the present and the past; we live again in their days, and thus a double live is given us – one of the present, and one of the past.”