West Springfield Public Library

This project includes a major addition and renovation to a 1916 Carnegie Library in downtown West Springfield. The original is a buff brick Classical Revival building with a single large reading room. Over the years, it had been enlarged with a fortress like addition, and the old reading room was filled with forbidding stacks.

The new design removes the 1958 and 1978 additions. It creates an atrium entrance with the Carnegie wing to its south and a two story addition to the north. The primary library functions are in the new wing, with the Children’s Room and a multipurpose room on the first floor and Adult Services and Young Adults above. The Carnegie wing houses a traditional reading room with a variety of seating, fiction stacks and periodicals.

The addition exterior creates a simple buff brick backdrop to the Carnegie wing; at the ends the masonry opens up with glass walls to display the activities of the Children’s Room, Young Adults and the Multipurpose Room to the street and the municipal parking.

(Richard Smith was the Library Planner, working with Centerbrook Architects as lead architectural designer and Caolo & Bieniek as executive architect.)