English: The Passmore Edwards Library, Whitechapel This famous library closed, to much opposition, in the early C21. It opened in May 1892, funded by the philanthropist whose name it bears, and because of the high Jewish population of the area, quickly built up what was the biggest collection of Jewish literature of any British library. It was known as the 'university of the ghetto' owing to its popularity as a meeting place for Jewish intellectuals and Yiddish readers - although by the 1970s Bengali books had become its main stock-in-trade. It has now been incorporated into the Whitechapel Art Gallery next door.