A century in the making

This story was featured in the July 2022 edition of Sandusky Living magazine. If you're interested in purchasing a copy, call the Register at 419-502-2130 while supplies last. SANDUSKY — Well-known businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped fund some 2,500 libraries in his lifetime. One of those sits on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Adams Street. The Sandusky Library is one of the three earliest Carnegie libraries built in Ohio. And library directors in the years since have managed the preserve the library's original look, even as they worked to expand the building to meet the community's needs. How it started Sandusky's library dates back to the early days of the city. The first library, the Portland Library, had been set up by 1826. Various groups kept alive the library, which was housed for a while at the high school and at the Masonic Temple. A building fund was established by 1886, and by 1898, enough money had been raised to pay $10,000 to buy the James Woolworth home at the southwest corner of Columbus Avenue and Adams Street. The house served as the library's location, for a time. But the current building began to take shape when Sandusky resident Jay O. Moss reached out to the wealthy Carnegie. Carnegie agreed to give $50,000 for a library for Sandusky, on the condition that the city committed to spending $3,000 a year to maintain the building. A building contract was awarded in the summer of 1900, and a dedication ceremony for the completed building, held on July 3, 1901, featured Ohio Gov. George K. Nash, according to a Sandusky Register article which cited the book "From the Widow's Walk" by Helen Hansen and Virginia Steinemann. How it got its look The library building was designed by Albert F. D'Oench, who also did buildings in New York City. The library building is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Ohio Historic Places Dictionary describes it as having "several elements in common with the Jacobethan Revival style. These include rectangular windows that are divided into rectangular lights by stone mullions, bay windows, steep sided triangular gables and towers that are crowned with curvilinear roofs." Expansion of the library waited for decades, but in the 1930s, library officials carried out a major interior change. The building's original auditorium, which boasted a stage and a pipe organ, was converted into an adult services area. Sandusky had a population of about 19,500 in 1900; by 1930, it had grown to about 24,000. As time passed, it became clear that the library needed more room. Expansion In 1995, then-director Julie Brooks put together focus groups to help the library put together a long-range plan. Local residents were asked what they wanted. The patrons wanted quiet spaces in the library to sit and read. They wanted more parking spaces. They wanted places for activities for kids. "What came out was space," Brooks recalled in an interview about 20 years later. "Each focus group we talked to wanted something that required space." A first step was the purchase in 1996 of another old building, the former Erie County jail. The jail, which had been built in 1883, had become redundant when the county built its new jail in 1990 on Columbus Avenue. In 1996, the Erie County commissioners agreed to aid the library expansion by selling the old jail building to the library for $1. The library then embarked upon a plan to triple its space and went to the voters in 1998 for approval of a bond issue, although the effort wasn't easy. It took two tries for the voters to go along. The first try went down to defeat in May 1998, when voters narrowly axed a proposed $7.2 million bond issue. It lost by about 50 votes. Local foundations had donated money to buy houses on Jackson Street to provide the space for the additional parking. The library had planned a glass-facade addition to connect the two older buildings. The rejection forced Brooks to revamp the plans and the library's campaign to win voter support. The library director found that voters hadn't liked the starkly modern-looking glass building extension connecting the two older buildings and wanted something that would blend better with the existing buildings. She also realized that the drawings the library had released apparently didn't give voters a clear idea of how much bigger and better the library would be when the project was completed. So the addition was completely redesigned, with two turrets added to make it look more historic, and the architects were commissioned to make a three-dimensional model that Brooks could take with her when she stumped for the bond issue. "It was big enough it filled my van," Brooks said. And it got the point across to voters that they'd be getting a big improvement. An Aug. 11, 1998, article in the Register described the reaction when Brooks and library officials unveiled the model at a Sandusky city commission meeting. A resident at the meeting "slowly turned the model, closely inspecting every angle of the mock library, parking lot and other features," the article said. "That was exactly the type of response Sandusky Library Director Julie Brooks wanted. She grinned as city officials and residents checked the model out." The second try at a $7.2 million bond issue passed by a comfortable margin in November 1998, with 3,997 (or 55%) voting "Yes," according to results reported immediately after the election. Getting to work Construction began in July 2001. It took almost three years, and Brooks recalled later that the experience was "brutal," as the library elected to stay open at the same location while work went on. While other libraries move to other locations while construction is going on, "we decided we would lose business and momentum if we left," Brooks said. "The construction was designed to work around us." As construction went on, nearby Zion Lutheran Church was enlisted to host library programs. The $7.2 million from the bond issue wasn't all that was needed, so the library supplemented it with a $2.4 million fundraising campaign to help pay for equipment and fixtures. The revamped library was completed in 2004. Space expanded from about 22,000 square feet to about 65,000. Parking spaces went from 14 to 78. And the improvements weren't just more room. Lighting was made brighter, aisles were widened and a quiet reading area was added. And library officials succeeded in preserving much of the library's original look. In a Jan. 11, 2004, article in the Register by Trish Doller, architect Peter Bolek of David Holzheimer Associates Architects of Chagrin Falls explained that a project to merge two very old buildings was a unique challenge. "You couldn't really match one or the other exactly to have everything be uniform," Bolek said. Instead, Bolek tried to use the best of both of the older buildings, merging old and new elements. New lighting fixtures were hung from the jail's tin ceiling. Weathered exterior walls were used as interior design features. Vintage paintings and objects were put on display. "That's what we had in mind from the very beginning … that existing pieces and architecture serve as art," Brooks told Doller.