In 1888 Benjamin H. Warder commissioned the firm of Shipley, Rutan, and Coolidge to construct the Warder Public Free Library and Reading Room. The building located on the corner of High Street and Spring Avenue is L in shape. Built-in Romanesque Style, it was constructed from Ohio Buff Sandstone and trimmed with Worcester Brownstone under a red clay tile roof. The east wing features an arcaded entrance porch; at the juncture of the wings is a tower that contains the staircase. The library featured a large reading room heated by a massive sandstone fireplace at one end measuring 18 feet high and 12.5 feet across. The Warder building remained a gift to the people of Springfield and was rededicated on June 9, 1990, to the Clark County Literacy Coalition, which still resides in the building today.
The Coalition was founded in 1988 after absorbing an adult literacy program created by Edith E. Stager in the 1950s. At that time, illiteracy among the people of Clark County was very high and Ms. Stager understood the importance and need of having a literacy program available to the people of this community. She was truly the pioneer of literacy among Clark County. The Coalition understood and saw the need that Ms. Edith Stager had and carried on in her footsteps.
At the time the Coalition was founded, 20% of adults in Clark County were illiterate. Due to this, the Coalition decided to not only continue the Adult Program that Ms. Stager founded but also created the Teaching Children to Read program. This program, created in 2005, was developed with the belief that the high rate of adult illiteracy in Clark County would lower if people struggling with reading and writing received the extra help they needed at a younger age.