June 30, 2016 at 8:21 a.m.
Much more than stacks: Tour illustrates district library's history, space issues
Much more than stacks: Tour illustrates district library's history, space issues
By Kayla Thomason-
For many, the Rhinelander District Library, which has been a part of the community for 118 years, is likely one of those markers. But that doesn't mean local residents know all there is to know about the library.
Library officials have started offering weekly tours of the facility (on Mondays or by appointment) in an effort to teach patrons about aspects of the venerable building with which they might not be familiar.
According to a historical account on the library's website, the city's first library opened on March 1, 1898 in Room 10 of the Merchants State Bank. It contained over 600 books.
A few weeks earlier, on Jan. 11, 1898, one of the library's biggest supporters - the Rhinelander Woman's Club - came into existence.
The club's first project was to add 300 more books to the library's collection. More than 118 years later, they are still working together.
Eventually, the library outgrew its first location and in 1902 Brown Brothers Lumber donated a plot of land at the corner of Stevens and Rives streets for a new building. With that and a grant from steel industry titan and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, construction of the Rhinelander District Library got underway in 1903.
"It was a community effort and very much a necessary for a town of this size that was growing," said Virginia Roberts, the current director.
The library was expanded in the 1980s, nearly doubling the floor space to the current 15,195 square feet.
This reporter's tour started in the lower level meeting room, which is actually a multi-purpose room where both children's and adult programs are hosted.
This space hasn't always had such a diversified use, however. Once, it housed the children's department.
"That's why we have a little proscenium stage," Roberts said. "We used to have shelving in here."
The general view of children's libraries has changed considerably since the early years, Roberts said.
"Part of the reason the children's library was in the basement - I suspect - was in the early days children's libraries were thought to be a school thing and not very important so a lot of libraries ended up in the basement," she explained.
There was even a special entrance for the children that let them in through the back door so they didn't have to cross the rest of the library.
People who have been in the meeting room likely have noticed the reinforcement posts which support shelving upstairs.
"This I found out from another library when I was touring in Oshkosh - they have a Carnegie building as well - and they cannot actually put anything on their main floor because when they did their addition they did not reinforce their Carnegie library," Roberts said. "It's a standard building, it's not built for shelves," she added, before the leading the way across the hallway to one of the two furnace rooms.
Both rooms have residential furnaces that have been running constantly for 10 years and are in need of replacement with something designed for commercial use.
From the furnace room the tour continued past the only restrooms in the building - which are located in the lower level, much to the chagrin of patrons and staff - and to the break room.
"We'd love to have bathrooms upstairs too because we have a lot of elderly people who use our library and frankly a lot of kids and emergencies happen," Roberts said.
The book sale books are stored in the break room, which also houses the computer switches and several boxes of books.
From there the tour crossed to the storage room, which has been a multi-use room for the past 30 years. It currently serves as the building supervisor's office, as well as the home of one of the computer servers. The space is so crowded that there are several shelves on rollers, all lined with books, programming materials and cleaning supplies.
"In August, during Redikulus Dae, we're hoping to hold a nostalgia sale and these books have been back here hanging out probably since your grandmother's time," she said.
Some of the books include takes of the Hardy Boys, Campfire Girls, Sherlock Holmes etc.
"They're really great, the unfortunate thing with these books is they are also extremely well-loved so while they may have value in their raw state, in this state they're just good reading copies and if somebody loved them as a child I would love to get them back to them because they are never going back on our shelves," Roberts said. "They're too well-loved and we want them to be continued to be well-loved so we want to get them in the hands of somebody who will say to their grandchild 'I loved this book, let's read it together.'"
In the room, set into the old white-painted brick wall is a chimney access door, and several feet to the right is the noticeable arch of a now filled-in fireplace.
"In 1906-1910 heat was not a regular thing and if we wanted to be open a couple times a week in the wintertime, which we did, we heated the room," she said.
From the storage/office room the tour moved to the children's library, which is decorated in cheery colors.
The children's library features a few pets for youngsters to enjoy, such as two leopard geckos, an anti-social turtle, and fish.
Roberts pointed out that there are no windows and very little light in the children's library. There are a few skylights but they have been placed under a canopy thus defeating the purpose. The only time sunlight shines through is in the summer.
"The problem is we have canopies over them (the skylights) because they are also walkways," Roberts said. "About now is about the only time of year we get sunlight down here."
The children's department tends to get crowded, Roberts added.
"You see the room full of 50 kids and all the computers are packed with two or three of them at once and they're playing games and they're reading and they're trying to do homework. We had to install quiet hours because there was no way it was going to be quiet down here," she said.
In the 1984 addition there is another narrow storage area with tall shelves lined with antique newspapers and art supplies. Next to those items is a device that handles the water pressure in the building. It's an unusual combination but Roberts sad there is no place to store the precious articles.
The device is checked frequently and kept up-to-date, she added.
Next to that room is the second furnace room, which also has the phone service and modem.
"So when our internet does go out I'm literally walking around the building with my cellphone because getting on a landline is impossible because I have to walk around the building," Roberts said.
The tour then moved outside. To get in and out of the back door people have to cross part of the parking lot next to the book drop box. The outside of the building needs some work, according to Robers.
"All of our metal work needs to be painted up there," she said. "Our roof was redone fairly recently but I still have some leaky windows. Some of the deferred maintenance we fix right away but some of it can be put off and it has been."
Some trees suffered during the Emerald Ash Borer attack, which killed two trees, Roberts added.
Eventually, the staff plans to replace the trees.
There was supposed to be ramp built outside the 1984 addition but the measurements were off and it was determined the area was to steep for a ramp, Roberts explained. Hence there are stairs leading to that entrance.
The entrance with the two pillars out front with "Public Library" spelled out on top is the original library entrance.
There is another entrance just to the left with a glass vestibule.
"1985 was an interesting year for construction," Roberts said. "Institutional construction. They knew what they wanted to do, they didn't always do it well. They made it look pretty."
An example is that when it rains water gets inside along the baseline so staff has to make sure everything is pulled away from the outer wall before it storms.
"If we don't do it, and again our building supervisor has an amazing handle on this, but it can get smelling kind of moldy in here, but we do our best," Roberts said. "It's also very cold in here in the wintertime. We get ice buildup and we are looking to see how we can mitigate that until we can get this replaced."
Inside, along one of the walls, is the silhouette of all of the stud walls.
The insulation installed in 1985 has since settled to the bottom of the wall.
"When they had the opportunity to go in and put more insulation in there it didn't happen," Roberts said. "So 10 years ago when that happened something didn't."
There are a few tables for patrons to use for studying, but they are crowded by the towering bookshelves.
"This is a golden age for publishing, more books are being published than ever," Roberts said.
There are also more forms of books from audio to large print.
"We are running out of space for our audiobooks, which are extremely popular," she said. "If all of our books came back at once, if every last material had to come into the building we wouldn't have room for people. I'm just grateful everybody checks stuff out and enjoys the books."
If an author or book is popular the library has duplicates to meet the needs of its patrons.
Those who visit the library may notice some empty spaces on the shelves, like the bottom shelf on the back wall, which has several vents right under it. Books aren't placed there unless they are flatlined, but staff doesn't want to risk the printed work.
Visitors may also notice that the 7-foot-tall shelving units are quite high. Not many books are placed on the top to reduce the chance of someone getting hurt trying to reach for a tome, Roberts said.
Somewhere along the line, when the shelving units were installed, someone stopped measuring and they became progressively further apart.
Roberts would like to move them, however, when the carpet was laid it was not placed under the shelves.
After highlighting the addition, Roberts continued to the original part of the building.
The original library's doorways, windows and trim still exist and in that section of the library a grandfather clock stands tall.
"The original Carnegie library starts right past our clock and that clock is original to the building," Roberts said. " I've seen those in other Carnegie libraries."
In the middle of the room arecubicles for those who wish to use a computer.
"What we would like to do is move them into a more private location and get our newer books and newer materials in the center, so this will be swapped one of these days," she said.
As patrons go to check out their books or videos they'll notice the lovely oak counter, but may be surprised to discover it is a replica.
Across from the counter is a cozy little fireplace that has been converted to gas instead of wood.
Past the cozy corner is the magazine and periodical, video and audio section.
One of the areas of the library that Roberts really wants to address is the young adult section.
"It's about as tight as can be," she said. "We're doing our best to give them room. What I'd really like to do is have enough space to move them out of here into the adult section because we have another problem ... this is our premier Bump art collection, it is the only such collection in the public library this far north."
The collection of art books has gotten smaller over the years, but Roberts would like to grow it again.
Roberts said this corner is a nice, quiet place to study and work as the Wi-Fi box is in the corner.
The back section of the original library houses the rest of the staff - six to seven people - and everyone is sitting nearly on top of one another.
Roberts shares her office with a staff member, as well as books that need to be repaired.
"At one point it was the director's office and the board room so the board would meet in here," she said. "We don't have room for that anymore. At one point also my desk was here (near the door) and there were two people there (near the far wall, which isn't very far away)."
When the courier comes to deliver the books they commandeer a walkthrough room so they can unload the blue crates.
The Rhinelander District Library offers numerous free programs and activities for the public, from children's events to crafts for adults and more. They see an average of 500 people a day.
With so much going on, space is tight and the library needs to expand and upgrade to comfortably accommodate everyone, Roberts said.
The library has a few concept plans that would add 5,000 square feet per floor, bringing the facility to 27,000 square feet and the children's room would have windows.
"I want a children's room with a window," Roberts said. "We want a dedicated space for our children to be and feel more comfortable when using the lavatory. We'd like a lavatory upstairs, things like that."
These are a lot of requests that patrons and staff have made, she added.
"One of the things I want to do with an addition is get a genealogy room," she said. "We want to have study rooms so that we're not booking a meeting room that people who need to study (need to use)."
Roberts is eternally grateful to the groups and individuals who have made donations to the library's building fund.
"Some wonderful area groups have pledged some money toward the building fund," she said. "It's going to be a while and we'll keep working on it, but I need local support to get larger support and it's going to be a very long process because everybody is looking for money."
The building fund will not only go toward expanding the facility, but upgrading it as well.
"A lot of what we'd like to do with the expansion, 40 percent of that goes towards upgrading the building and the deferred maintenance issues won't be deferred anymore," she said.
Roberts said she understands that many people are buying books and getting information from Amazon and other online sources, but she believes local libraries are still essential even in the Internet age.
"The library itself, as a building, is a materials warehouse," she said. "What makes the library so essential is we have trained and educated librarians working here. While Google will find you 10,000 answers your librarian will find you the one you need in the fastest way possible as best she or he can."
When the children have to find resources that must be a book, the librarians can help.
"A lot of what we do is educate," she said. "We're not educating on the same level as say our teachers are, we're educating on a different level. You've gotten beyond high school but you still want to learn how to find car repair manuals, we can do that. You want to know how to fix your lawn mower, we can do that. You want to find that tax form that somebody said you needed we can do that. We can show you where those are, we can print them out for you if we need to."
"I've seen some tremendous support from communities all across the country for libraries, this community is no different we have amazing support here," she added. "We love this public, we love it here and we would really like to remain open in the current location with all of the things we have and expand on that per what the public wants us to do."
Library tours will be available on Mondays at 10:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. through the month of August.
Roberts said other libraries do tours and she thinks it's important for the public to know what is going on and what the library is doing. It's also a nostalgia trip for some of the visitors.
"I want anybody who is interested to take the tour," she said. "I want people who have not set foot in this library since they are little. I want people who have never set foot in this library and wonder why we have one to come in and see what this place is like."
For more details or to schedule an appointment for a tour, contact the library at (715) 365-1070.
Kayla Breese may be reached at kayla @rivernewsonline.com.
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