Gail Borden

[bawr-dn]

Borden, Gail, 1801-74, American dairyman, surveyor, and inventor, b. Norwich, N.Y. He was for several years a deputy surveyor in Mississippi; afterward he joined the colony of Stephen F. Austin in Texas. There, besides farming, stock-raising, and newspaper activities, he superintended the surveying of lands for Austin. He laid out the city of Galveston, where he became collector of customs. After returning (1851) to New York, he worked on a process of evaporating milk, which he patented in 1856. Jeremiah Milbank backed him financially, and the Borden Milk Company (now the Borden Family of Companies, including Borden Foods Corp. and Borden Chemicals Inc.) opened its first evaporating plant in 1858. During the Civil War his product was found to be of great value to the army, and its use spread rapidly afterward. Borden subsequently also patented processes for concentrating fruit juices and other beverages.

See biography by J. B. Frantz (1951).

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Licensed from Columbia University Press

Gail Borden Public Library District

Gail Borden Public Library is a public library district located in Elgin, Illinois, USA. District boundaries include the cities of Elgin, South Elgin, Bartlett, Streamwood, and Hoffman Estates. The library is a member of the North Suburban Library System (NSLS) a consortium of 650 academic, public, school, and special libraries located throughout Cook, Kane, Lake, and McHenry counties and one of nine multi-type regional library systems in Illinois.

History

The library was named in honor of Gail Borden (9 November 1801 - 11 January 1874 ), who in 1856 invented condensed milk. Although he never lived in Elgin or donated any funds for the library which bears his name in 1892 his step sons, Samuel and Alfred Church, residents of Elgin, purchased and donated the Scofield Mansion at 50 N. Spring Street to house the new library. Samuel and Alfred’s only request was that the library be forever and always known and called the Gail Borden Public Library.

Gail Borden Public Library Today

In the autumn of 2003, the library moved into a new 139,980 square feet facility just across the street from the old library at a cost of $29.8 million. The new library is situated along the eastern shore of the Fox River and includes a shelving capacity of 460,000 volumes. The architects, Frye Gillan Molinaro Architects, Ltd, designed the library to accommodate the expected growth in population from 110,000 in 2004 to 165,000 over the next 20 years. The library, a two-story structure is clad in warm buff and terra cotta-colored stone and inspired by the late 19th and early 20th century architectural Prairie School style, illustrated by Frank Lloyd Wright and others.