Jesse Floyd
The Belmont Public Library building on Concord Avenue is almost empty now, with services moved to temporary locations, and books and furnishings now being moved out as well.
Later in January, the building will be turned over to a company for demolition. It will be replaced by a new library building, scheduled to open in 2025.
For Belmont and Belmont residents, the building of a new library marks a watershed moment.
“The life expectancy of the building is at least 50 to 70 years. In that time, 20 million people, Belmont residents, will pass through the library,” said Peter Struzziero, the library director. “This really is a generational change for the community.”
The old building closed Nov. 22, 2023 and library services started appearing in the new locations just days after Thanksgiving. Adult library services operate from the Beech Street Center; childrens’ services have moved to the Benton Library on Oakley Road; and some staff and administration will work from space at the Chenery School.
Struzziero said he is spending his time driving from location to location, managing staff and managing the logistics of moving one library into multiple locations. The goal, he said, is to provide viable services until that 2025 opening day.
This month is full of key dates: On Jan. 13 at Concord Avenue, you can shop for library fixtures — surplus hard goods that won’t be needed when the new building opens in 2025; on an as-yet-to-be-determined date in late January, there will be a decommissioning ceremony for the building; then it will be handed to the demolition company, possibly Jan. 29, but before the calendar flips to February.
Kathy Keohane is woven into the story of the library construction, serving as co-chair of the Library Board of Trustees, a member of the Library Building Committee and the trustee liaison to the Belmont Library Foundation. She is proud to point out the Belmont library has the 10th highest circulation in Massachusetts.
According to Keohane, the high rank highlights the importance of the facility.
“There’s no doubt about it. Belmont is a community that values its library and all the services that it offers,” she said. “Although we’re talking about moving, and it’s overwhelming. If you’ve ever moved yourself, it’s that tenfold, with lots of staff to placate, engage and direct across three and four different locations.”
Belmont residents value the library enough to dedicate $39.5 million to the project. According to the Library Foundation website, voters approved funding $34.5 million with the balance — $5 million — being raised from community donations.
“We continue to seek additional donations and additional grants, but we are on track for that $5 million. To date, we have transferred to the town $2.9 million, with additional monies to follow,“ Keohane said.
Struzziero said the $5 million is the largest amount raised for a public project in Belmont.
“So it’s a heroic effort by Kathy and her colleagues on the Library Foundation, trustees as well. It’s not a small amount. It’s not a small percentage that was raised,” he said.
Replacing the library has been a community conversation for many years, Struzziero said. This latest iteration is just the one that bore fruit. This successful attempt began with a feasibility study in 2017 and bolstered by nine community forums — some predating the design and development process. Even those earliest forums proved popular, drawing crowds of up to 100 people.
The end result is a compromise. Some ideas were overwhelmingly popular, Keohane said, citing a desire for quiet spaces and the need for a larger children’s section as common themes at the forums.
According to Struzziero, the result is a larger building than the current library, but not as large as some past proposals. It is, he emphasized, not a Taj Mahal — but it will be a beautiful, well-built structure aimed at high function.
“It’s important for people to know that it was very much a Belmont homegrown building and that we were being as prudent as we could with the decision making. So there’s fun elements, but there’s nothing in it that’s over the top,” he said.
According to Struzziero, one aspiration was to create a building where every single person can find something they love.
Moving History Forward
Some of the precious historical items in the building have been moved to new temporary locations, Keohane said. The trustees procured a Community Preservation grant to preserve stained glass windows that were in the Children’s Room. Bronze plaques and figurines were also moved.
“It is all part of moving the past forward,” she said.
There has been great care taken in naming the different rooms. The large conference room where some of the historic artifacts owned by the library will be displayed will bear the Underwood name – the library stands on land once owned by the Underwood family, a famous Belmont family and founders of the Underwood Canning company.
The quiet rooms will be named for different schools, past and present, she added.
“We thought that was fitting, given the mission of the schools is lifelong learning and that investment in information access, which is what the library is all about,” she said.
Some items are still in flux. A large ceramic mural, created by students at the Kendall Center of the Arts in 1995, still needs a home. There is a relief map, created by local Boy Scouts in the 1950s likewise seeking somewhere to be called home.
The project, they emphasized, is the end result of a partnership created between multiple library support groups: the Library Building Committee, the Library Board of Trustees, Belmont Public Library staff and administrators, the builder, the architect, the Belmont Library Foundation (BLF), the Friends of the Belmont Public Library (FOBPL), the town government and of course, the residents who made their needs known.
“We have said, because of the way we’ve designed this, we’ve designed it very flexibly and fluidly so that it really should last with the quality of the construction in excess of 50 years. Clair [Colburn], the chair, the building committee, talks about it as the building for the next hundred years,” Keohane said.
