It’s International Women’s Day, and here in La Jolla we’re celebrating all our phenomenal females.

You are probably familiar with La Jolla’s most renowned benefactress, Ellen Browning Scripps, but have you heard of Florence Sawyer?

Florence Sawyer championed many efforts in La Jolla’s early development, namely the La Jolla Reading Room, part of the La Jolla Reading Club, which eventually emerged as the Library Association of La Jolla, the formal name of the present-day Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. 

Sawyer, from Oakland, Ca., first registered at the La Jolla Park Hotel as a companion to Catherine Howard Spear of Burlington, Vt. in August 1895, according to “La Jolla Year by Year” by Howard Randolph. Sawyer and Spear eventually relocated to La Jolla, with Sawyer purchasing the plot of land bordered by Girard Avenue, Prospect Street, Herschel Avenue and Wall Street.

A 60-by-60-foot plot of that land, at Girard and Wall where the present-day Athenaeum stands, is where Sawyer constructed a Reading Room in 1898 as a donation of both land and structure to the newly-established La Jolla Reading Club.

Sawyer also bundled her gift with a donation of a piano and a thousand dollars’ worth of books.

Group photo: Florence Sawyer, third from right, established the La Jolla Reading Room at Girard and Wall. Credit to the La Jolla Historical Society.

She presented the Reading Room to the Library Association of La Jolla in August 1899 as a memorial to Spear after Spear’s death earlier that year.

Sawyer also bought the “Red Rest” cottage on Coast Blvd and also served on the executive committee of the La Jolla Village Improvement Society, which eventually became the Chamber of Commerce of La Jolla.

In May 1899, she married John Ransome Bransby and became Florence Bransby.