The Return of a Classic

A Carnegie building, the District of Columbia's Southeast Branch gets an inspired update

By Raya Kuzyk -- Library Journal, 9/15/2007

Atop its small grassy knoll on Capitol Hill, a short walk from both a Metro station and the historic Eastern Market, the District of Columbia Public Library's (DCPL) Southeast Branch Library holds one of the district's choicest seats and is home to a broad ethnic and socioeconomic section of residents. Stately in size (the main floor measures 5250 square feet), age (85), and design (neoclassical Carnegie), it flaunts a portico entrance, Corinthian columns, and arched windows. Inside, more columns, a vaulted ceiling, an 11'-high fireplace, and wood trim evoke architect Edward L. Tilton's original vision.

All photos ©2007 Alan Gilbert photography, www.photopian.com/

But grand as it is, Southeast languished as library and city overseers belatedly turned to the system's decaying physical plant. While the city recently contracted to rebuild four of DCPL's 27 branches and plans to renovate several others, Southeast, last renovated in 1982, was low on the list. “If LJ hadn't intervened,” says DCPL Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper, “we would have done the bathrooms and then not done anything else for maybe another decade.”

For the third year, LJ has played fairy godmother to a branch library, sponsoring its renovation and refurbishment. This year, Southeast was the lucky duckling. LJ publisher Ron Shank and Editor in Chief Francine Fialkoff coordinated $500,000 worth of pro bono architectural design services and vendor donations for the library, so that Southeast could get the attention it deserved, and quickly—unusual in DC. On May 1, the library closed its doors—continuing service via bookmobile. Cooper, DCPL project manager Kim Fuller, and volunteer architect Henry Myerberg (HMA², New York) kicked off a seven-week renovation of its main floor. The reopening was timed to make a splash during the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in late June. Here they report on the progress they made and recall the dizzying pace.

COOPER We were thrilled when Francine Fialkoff called in December to tell us that LJ had selected DCPL as its makeover project. Our library system's buildings have been greatly neglected, and we don't have experience doing things quickly here in DC—we're not a very flexible place—so this was a wonderful opportunity for things to get done right. Francine recruited Henry Myerberg, which we're very grateful for.

MYERBERG I was intrigued by LJ's idea of reworking libraries in ALA conference cities, of its using libraries as catalysts to rejuvenate neighborhoods and cities. But these experiences are mostly about the people, not the projects, aren't they? So I admit, I Googled Ginnie Cooper. And when I didn't find any red herrings, I said let's get everyone together as soon as possible, to see if there's any chemistry. I went into it thinking, okay, I'll give it a chance—it wasn't even officially a project at that point; it was still an investigation.

COOPER Everyone visited in January to scope out a few of the branches as potential candidates. Southeast was an easy choice: it's got a ground-level main floor, the community is diverse, and the library really holds its own as an icon.

MYERBERG When we walked in that day, the first thing we saw was the ceiling, this wonderful historical shell that had been made to look very generic. The next thing we saw—or should have seen, had it not been completely obfuscated—was this beautiful fireplace. I knew the sea of book stacks had to be parted, to create a center space that would lead directly to the fireplace. And I was already asking myself: How can we achieve that feeling of arrival, terminated by the fireplace, imagining that this is the living room of the library?

Ginnie and I were very much on the same page aesthetically: this is a historic Carnegie building, so we agreed it couldn't be a historic restoration. Instead, we wanted to focus on the new and to communicate this newness—of library and library services—to the community.

As soon as we got back to New York, we started taking notes on the existing conditions, on what had to be done. The next time all of us got together three weeks later, in Seattle, for ALA's Midwinter Meeting, over breakfast one day we discussed preliminary plans and ideas and reviewed the layout and overall design concept.

COOPER We decided to restore the ceiling, using drywall to replicate the plaster, and raise it back to its original height. We wanted to redo the lighting, the color scheme, the carpeting; replace most of the furniture; add public-use computers—we started out with only three or four; let in more light; create a more playable children's area; and otherwise give the place a long-overdue spring cleaning. [Today, the library has 23 computers: 12 public, four children's, three catalog, and four staff.]

MYERBERG We also took the opportunity at the conference to check with the various vendors exhibiting and begin to imagine which vendors and products we might want to use. Pretty much everyone was eager to participate.

COOPER We've got some products here [at Southeast] that have never been used before, aren't even on the market.

MYERBERG That's right, [like] the acoustic panel system for the ceiling. When we heard Armstrong was developing a product along the lines of what we wanted, I asked how they'd feel about offering it to us for free—as a showcase installation—and they agreed.

COOPER I met with library staff and the Friends a couple of times, as did Kim [Fuller], who came on board in March and has really been the person on the ground here making things happen. The day of her birthday, she was up at 5 a.m. to make sure the workers could get in.

FULLER When I first heard about the renovation, I thought, “Oh, so it's going to be like an episode of Extreme Makeover.”

COOPER We quickly dispelled her of that notion.

FULLER I wish it were as easy as painting, carpeting, exit stage right. But that's not how anything goes on in the real world.

MYERBERG We developed the design further, exchanged some information over the phone, then decided it was time to meet face to face again. Ginnie and Kim came to our New York office to meet with LJ and me and to review samples of the chairs, tables, and fabrics. For the carpet, we decided on Milliken's “Mad Professor” design: it's perfect for libraries because it's got letters in it while also being abstract enough. During that meeting, we also determined things like the layout of that carpeting in the space.

COOPER At LJ publisher Ron Shank's suggestion, Henry's office put together an itemized sheet that helped us narrow down the number of products, figure out which items needed to be handled on the construction side, things like that. Before then, it was all a big soupy mess.

MYERBERG Kim was put in charge of the execution, and we became the support, that was the system. And every phone call we summed up with, okay: Between Ginnie and Kim and our team, who owns this? That kept us on track.

COOPER The collection had been an amalgam of everything getting thrown in, because nothing was ever removed from that building, in terms of books or furniture or stuffed animals or posters on the walls—not anything.

MYERBERG It was like somebody's attic, really.

COOPER A total hodgepodge. But after moving the books to our main branch, we worked with the Friends group and library staff to do a fairly major weeding, augmenting what remained with some new materials.

MYERBERG The weeding didn't in any way affect shelving capacity, though—we were trying to optimize the space more for people rather than books.

COOPER The collection is still about the same size [77,500], give or take, as when we started.

COOPER The wood shelving along the perimeter was the only furniture that stayed. Three-quarter-moon tables, desks, chairs, and book trucks and shelves were some of the new furniture. We cleaned and restored all the woodwork, including the columns, which had everything in the world Scotch-taped onto them. And the information desks are smaller now, making it more interactive for the staff.

MYERBERG Embedded in the fireplace, we found a number of Moravian Mercer tiles illustrating the changing of the seasons as described in the general prolog of The Canterbury Tales. After that, everything really clicked into place. Our wonderful design and graphics team—the Willoughby folks and my wife, Karen Davidov—continued that transition from summer to winter along the bookshelves by putting seasonal imagery on the end panels along with excerpts from The Canterbury Tales in both Old English (facing left) and Modern English (facing right).

Out of the center, we made a sort of environmental poetry. The elongated computer table, the real hub of the library, is supposed to be reminiscent of the National Mall in Washington. The green carpeting suggests a lawn; the rows of bookshelves, flanking hedges. The color scheme is a fusion of earth tones, echoing the terra cotta of the building and the foliage of the garden—and all the tables have differently finished linoleum tops. The carpet, too, has that element of randomness so prevalent in nature.

Then the Willoughby team came down to photograph the typeface in the neighborhood signage—they also downloaded some images from the free photo-sharing site Flickr—re-creating all these bits from the outside on the inside. We wanted to bring the exterior park and urban context metaphorically to the interiors to broadcast the welcome public access of the library.

COOPER Henry and Jackie Scranton [Beatty, Harvey Associates project architect] lifted the ceiling up as much as they could, 18 inches, to its original height of about 14 feet. And things like the Palladian windows, you can see them now. Really, the design has been as much as possible about celebrating the qualities already inherent to the library.

Branch manager John Davenport reports that, in the month following the makeover, Southeast's circulation was at 2,389 (prior to closing, it averaged 1350 books per month). There's also been an uptick in library card use: premakeover, an average of 45 new cards were issued per month; in the months since, according to Davenport, some 260 new cards were issued.

“But keep in mind,” says Davenport in August, “that this is all at a time when school is still closed. There's a junior high across the street whose students heavily use our library, and it's reopening in the next three weeks—we're really going to see a spike then.”

As for computer use, the day LJ spoke with Davenport, he reported that all the computer stations were in use, with several patrons waiting their turn. And what's more, the collection is growing: “books are coming in all the time to fill out the shelves,” says Davenport, who, as a former English teacher, is especially pleased with a new display of medieval books (inspired by the library's new theme), which has been stoking significant interest.

Finally, though the staff recently took down the sign with the makeover's participating vendors, “people are still coming in asking, from a business perspective, who did the furniture, the lighting, the carpeting,” says Davenport, “and we're proud to tell them.”