Library Renewal

This is the main room of the newly restored Special Collections Library. The Pueblo-style library was built in 1925. (ROBERTO E. ROSALES/JOURNAL)

Cassidy’s descriptions are again accurate, thanks to a $1.2 million, 2 1/2-year physical and psychic face-lift for the Special Collections research library. The library, home to more than 25,000 non-circulating items including books, maps, pamphlets and reports, has resumed normal operations, minus the genealogical collection now permanently housed at the Main Library at Fifth and Copper.

	Special Collections Library Where: 423 Central NE Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday; closed Sunday and Monday. Upcoming events: Brian Luna Lucero talk, “From Corrales to Pajarito: Old Spanish Neighborhoods Along the Rio Grande,” 10:30 a.m. to noon Jan. 12; screening of “Vertigo” in the Books to Big Screen series, 2 p.m. Jan. 26.

A 2013 Speakers Series kicks off Jan. 12 with Brian Luna Lucero talking about old Spanish neighborhoods along the Rio Grande in this area.

The renovation process described by library director Dean Smith and special collections branch manager Eileen O’Connell is full of the sorts of nightmare scenarios any homeowner has faced, only on a grander scale.

The 1925 structure got additions and minor renovations in 1947 and 1951, when a 126-seat auditorium, Botts Hall, was built close to Central Avenue. The building went through another renovation in the 1970s, about the time the new Main Library was built across the railroad tracks.

Although a 2005 master plan identified $7 million in improvements to bring the building up to 21st century standards, Smith said they were pleased to have enough money to undertake unglamorous but necessary core fixes, like leaks, wiring and the heating and cooling systems.

Cherry, See, Reames Architects designed the remodel, and contractors J.B. Henderson dug in enthusiastically on construction that proved full of surprises.

Stucco (Cassidy’s “natural adobe”) over low-fired brick recycled from the original library on the site had created exterior cracks. The Pueblo-themed wall decorations in the interior were painted over and then poorly restored.

“The approach is very different than in 1977,” Smith said of historic preservation techniques.

Rather than using opaque paint on the wall decorations, for instance, technicians studied old photographs of the original fireplaces to replicate the translucent wash employed by the “prominent artist” – German-born printmaker and Santa Fe resident Gustave Baumann, renowned for his color woodblock prints.

The renovation led to the discovery of large, old windows on the building’s west side that had been plastered over during one remodel – and are again open to the light. The contractor discovered them while trying to locate an electrical line. Windows in the children’s room where the wood frames had rotted were replaced.

Hand-dyed, handwoven rugs by internationally known weaver Nancy Kozikowski were cleaned and returned to the reading rooms.

Work in Botts Hall improved its audio and video potential and made it more inviting as a community gathering place. The auditorium has already been put to use for public hearings and author readings.

Among features of the Special Collections Library is The Center for the Book, where the public, particularly schoolchildren, can view seven types of printing presses and periodically see one in action. Volunteer docents help shepherd kids through the printing press area next to the children’s room with a 1995 mural by artist Diana Stetson tracing the history of the written word.

There, kids also can handle and wonder at books published as early as 1548, all acquired for $5 or less by former library director Alan Clark during his travels.

“He would go to dealers and ask for ‘junk,’ ” Smith said. Those volumes, often leatherbound treatises in Latin, Greek and German, “can be handed to a kid, and we don’t have to worry about it.”

“The Book Warden,” a sculpture by the late Melissa Zink, purchased with money from Albuquerque Public Arts fund, rounds out the renovations and brings the word “special” back to Albuquerque’s original public library.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal