Renton has, as far as we are able to inform, the one public library constructed over a river.
Because the Cedar River flows serenely via downtown Renton, it’s a scene out of Venice or Amsterdam: The water has been skilled right into a straight line, like a deliberate canal, with at the very least six bridges spanning it when you embody I-405. Most have been designed for vehicles to cross the river, and a few enable pedestrians too. However solely one in all them is engineered for library carts as effectively.
Constructed in 1966, the Renton Library’s journey to existence was maybe much less plumbed and ideal than this stretch of the Cedar. In reality, it’s bought fairly a couple of twists and turns. The story begins in 1903.
On the flip of the century, Renton was a thriving coal-mining city with a inhabitants of 1,176. The city was integrated the next yr, and a small book-lending library was put collectively in 1903 by the Renton Coal Miners Affiliation in an area above the final retailer. The gathering later moved to the second flooring of Brendel’s Drug Retailer on Wells Avenue South and South Third Avenue—a constructing that is at the moment the house of Frequent Floor Espresso. The librarian was Blanche Pritchard Hughes, who obtained a wage of $35.
In 1907, the Coal Miners Affiliation donated these books to Renton Excessive Faculty, the place they lived fortunately till 1913. However with no extra room within the faculty for the increasing assortment, Renton resident Neva Bostwick Douglas utilized for metal tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s fledgling library program. Bostwick Douglas assembled a committee to do that, and in 1913, the Carnegie Company supplied a grant of $10,000.
Then they needed to resolve the place to place the brand new library. After months of disagreement amongst Rentonites, which took so lengthy that the Carnegie grant was almost rescinded, landowners Ignazio and Jennie Sartori ended the argument after they donated three tons on the sting of northern Renton. The Georgian-style redbrick constructing opened throughout the road from the north finish of Liberty Park on March 11, 1914. Designed by Harold H. Ginnold, the Carnegie Library had room for 8,000 books. Some of us nonetheless thought it was too distant from the middle of commerce, and as soon as it was constructed, a newspaper editorial opined: “Don’t let the thought that you simply don’t like the placement cease you from doing all your responsibility. The library is right here, simply the identical because the Cedar River is right here, and it’s your responsibility to profit from it.”
The Renton Metropolis Council gave the library $1,000 to rent workers and canopy upkeep, nevertheless it didn’t have money for books, so companies and residents contributed round $800 to fill out the empty cabinets. Public libraries in Seattle and Tacoma additionally donated many books for the preliminary assortment.
In reality, it solely took till the Nineteen Thirties for the gathering to outgrow its new location. When Renton’s inhabitants greater than quintupled the next decade, due to a brand new Boeing plant in 1941 and a subsequent wartime growth, the Renton Public Library’s e-book inhabitants grew too. A list depend in the course of the ’40s reported round 68,000 books in a constructing meant to accommodate simply 8,000.
In 1944, the newly fashioned King County Library System (KCLS) established a second Renton library within the Highlands. The town now had a essential library and a department library. It additionally had a funding downside. The League of Ladies Voters and the Larger Renton Chamber of Commerce offered three totally different bond points to metropolis voters to fund a substitute for the chockablock Carnegie Library, however they have been all defeated through the years, with voters involved about prices—and but once more conflicted on the library’s proposed location. It will take till late 1964 for a $150,000 bond measure to see the sunshine of day.
In response to Renton historian Elizabeth Stewart, the principle purpose that the bond was finally authorised was the weird location and design proposed within the 1964 draft. Per Stewart’s article, “From Carnegie to the Cedar River,” it was to be constructed “throughout the Cedar River, resting on twelve large columns and the riverbanks themselves,” and would symbolize a “imaginative and prescient [for] a civic complicated on the Cedar River. This imaginative and prescient made all of the distinction. Renton residents have been captivated by the prize-winning design for a brand new library that might straddle the river, close to a brand new Metropolis Corridor, senior middle, neighborhood auditorium, and park grounds.”
Grants awarded by the governor’s workplace helped fund a much-needed renovation of the library.
Architects Felice “Felix” M. Campanella and David A. Johnston have been introduced in to design the brand new library; the duo had gotten their begin in supermarkets and had beforehand teamed as much as construct the brutalist-modernist St. Alphonsus Church in Ballard in 1960. The brand new library spanning the river was constructed by Alton V. Phillips and Firm for $327,560, and at 20,000 sq. toes, it might comprise 100,000 volumes. The positioning is about 700 toes away from the previous Carnegie Library, with the east finish of the constructing anchored on the northwest nook of Liberty Park and the west finish on the opposite facet of the river, subsequent to Renton Prep Faculty. E book stacks have been slated for the facet of the constructing over the river’s western financial institution, due to their weight, and a number of the library’s state-of-the-art options for the period included “a telephone-intercom system, a listening unit within the music division, and waterlights to spotlight the river at night time.”
So far as anybody appears to know, Renton’s is the one library on this planet that’s constructed on high of a river, and positively the one library whereby within the constructing itself serves as a bridge. There are, after all, bridges elsewhere on this planet that incorporate buildings, just like the Ponte di Rialto in Venice or the Tower Bridge in London—and previously London Bridge, which was as soon as crowded with outlets. However these examples are all both bridges the place within the pilings are the buildings or they’re bridges upon which buildings have later been constructed, and none of them are libraries. Renton Library was initially designed, constructed, and meant to be a library within the form and performance of a bridge.
The brand new constructing was named the Renton Public Library, however since its opening in 1966, it has been, understandably, referred to by locals because the Cedar River Library. The yr after it opened, the Renton Carnegie Library constructing was demolished, regardless of efforts to avoid wasting the historic constructing, as a result of huge restore prices.
In March of 2010, the King County Library system annexed each the Renton Public and Renton Highlands libraries, whereupon each have been bolstered considerably, with a contemporary replace to the pc community, longer working hours, and brand-new library furnishings amongst different added companies.
Following annexation, metropolis officers instantly tried to relocate the Renton Library from its river web site to the location of the previous Large 5 location in downtown Renton, subsequent to the general public Renton Piazza. If Rentonites didn’t like the placement of the library at first, they prefer it now: Residents organized to stop the relocation and a referendum on the problem appeared on the August 2012 poll, with town council asking voters to resolve the geographical way forward for the Renton Public Library. Fortunately, with 76 % of voters in favor of leaving it as is, the library stayed put.
Between 2012 and 2016, the Renton Library obtained Governor’s Sensible Communities Awards, which promote sensible development and planning tasks to higher serve communities. These awards allowed the King County Library System and the Metropolis of Renton to conduct a 15-month renovation of each the outside and inside, with the assistance of architectural agency Miller Hull Partnership, which was accomplished in 2015. In 2016, it additionally obtained a Library Constructing Award from the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Affiliation. It will obtain two extra architectural awards the next yr.
Because the Miller Hull web site describes it, “Renton Library represents our design method of regionalism grounded in a selected place.”
With streamlined midcentury attraction, floor-to-ceiling home windows, an out of doors balcony on the south facet for interactive river-gazing, and a picture-postcard view of the water and the greenways surrounding it, it’s a peaceable respite, an historic marker, and a singular architectural treasure. Didn’t know this was hiding out in Renton, did ya?
