THE MODESTO BEE Friday, November 12, 1971 G-3 Move From Grill To McHenry Building Was Big Step In 1912 It must have seemed a magnificent structure indeed, the McHenry Memorial Library, that April day in 1912 when it was opened to the public for the first time. If Modestos 1971 library, the second library building in the citys 100-year history, seems opulent for a city of 57,000, so did its first. Fifty-nine years ago, with many of the working people in the citys population of 5,000 earning less than $1 a day, $27,000 to build and furnish a 7,500-square-foot library must have been impressive. The 1912 library, as a matter of fact, provided more per capita square footage than the 1971 library building does, with its 62,000 square feet of floor space--almost nine times bigger than its predecessor. Moreover, the redoubtable widow of the citys benefactor, Oramil McHenry, whose 1906 bequest built and furnished the library, saw to It that the building was a fitting tribute to her late millionaire husband, although by the time it opened the second Mrs. McHenry had become Mrs. W. H. Langdon. Mrs. Langdon, president of the McHenry Library Board, was responsible for much of the interior, including such niceties as a porch for an outdoor reading room, a mens smoking lounge, a ladies sitting room, an auditorium with a stage (where the city council met for years) and three fireplaces. The large tiled fireplaces, set off with hand carved mantels, have been covered up with bookshelves during much of the librarys congested lifespan. Now empty, the interior looks as stately as it must have that April day more than half a century ago. A circle of massive hand carved wooden pillars, sets off the high-domed ceiling, on which early residents remember frescoes. Two upstairs fireplaces have emerged from hiding behind books. Downstairs in the mens smoking room there is another fireplace. But 18 years after it opened, the stately McHenry Library was so crowded with an overflow of books and patrons, that a $30,000 addition was built by design consultant Carroll Sagar and architect Robert A. Reid, doubling its floor space to 15,000 square feet. And by the end of 40 more years, the building itself had long been outgrown by the areas library needs. If this years transition from the tired, overcrowded, 59 year old McHenry Library, with its heating, air conditioning, drainage, roof and floor problems, not to mention peeling paint, to the posh 1971 library seems extreme, consider the 1912 transition. The newly merged Stanislaus County-Modesto City library system was headquartered in rooms over the Modesto Grill on I Street, between Ninth and Tenth Streets. Some 300 card-carrying library patrons perused slightly more than a thousand volumes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily to the upward- wafted aroma of frying fish. From there to the stately white pillared McHenry Library was a long step indeed on that April day. Earlier Start Actually, Modestos library history started long before: As far back as 1890, a number of public reading rooms existed. A book renting library also was doing commendable business. By 1906, the year of McHenrys death, one of the reading rooms merged with the Free Reading Room sponsored by the Womens Improvement Club in the California House hotel on H Street It was the first establishment to be called the Modesto City Library. With McHenrys money in the city pocket, city councilmen went into the public library business over the restaurant on I Street the next year, allocating $750 a year for the project a fact, 1907 was a good year for the library business all around. L. T. Moss took over as librarian. The Modesto Library Society donated $150 for a juvenile reading room. The ladies of the Friday Afternoon Club gave their 239 books, mostly fiction, to the new city library when they disbanded. $1,4W Contribution One of the new librarys benefactors was the Modesto Billiard Club, whose members, in a burst of benevolent respectability, turned over about $1,400, when the group dissolved in 1907. Work began on the new library building at the corner of 14th and I Streets in 1911, and the library opened in the spring of the next year. By this time, the city library operation had merged with the new Stanislaus County Free Building Table of Contents Begins with 24,000 Blocks To build the walls of the Modesto - Stanislaus Library, masons used 24,000 rough-textured, white basalt concrete blocks. They are made of a dolomite aggregate from Napa County and mortared in a split-face pattern. Each of the librarys 42 Hat-sided columns weighs 22 tons and contains nine and one- eighth yards of concrete formed and poured on the site. Columns are 26 feet, 10 inches high, and support the flat roof overhang covering the library arcade. The canopy or overhang is 28 feet wide, tapering from eight inches thick at the wall to 12 inches thick at the tip. It extends about ten feet beyond the 19-foot-wide gallery or loggia, where library visitors will walk from the 126-space parking lot. The loggia walk is color- touched by red ceramic quarry tile inserts in exposed aggregate squares. They match red squares overhead where light chandeliers hang over the walkway. 30 Feet Above Deck The top of the library parapet frieze is 30 feet above the arcade deck. Inside the building, book stacks costing $81,996 h a v e enough shelves (nearly half a mile) to stretch end for end from the librarys front door to the I Street Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health arch. The massive air conditioning and heating system is linked between the main machinery mezzanine above the front entrance to a gas-fired boiler and more fans on the lower level. Air cooling comes from a 180-ton compressor-chiller and three blower fans of 22,600, 33,800 and 16,000 cubic feet per minute capacities. More than enough to cool 20 average-sized homes. Heater Boiler Heating comes from hot water heated by the boiler and circulated to the same three fans to produce outputs of 9,900, 16,000 and 16,100 BTU each. Subcontractor George F. Schuler Co. of Modesto installed the equipment. The main floor concrete slab Is 11 1/2 inches thick. At the bases of-the interior columns, the slabs are 20 inches thick. More than 200 young plants, shrubs and trees are planted around the library. The landscaping contract, including instant grass, amounted to $16,501. Field superintendents for Acme Construction, the prime contractor, were Frank Jepson and Francis Clemens. Library inspector Warren Younger, 71, of Modesto, was on the Job before the April 1370 groundbreaking as the citys representative. Library, after county supervisors agreed to levy a countywide library tax. The first years budget was $1200, $200 from general taxes and $1,000 levied on the towns possibly least literary citizens, its pool hall operators. The first librarian at McHenry library was Miss Cornelia D. Provines. Today, the countys branch in the Red Shield Community Center in south Modesto is named for her. First Automobile Until 1920, when the library was given a Dodge roadster, librarians traveled by horse and buggy, sometimes by train, to visit the various county branches, occasionally staying overnight in more distant communities, halls. In the Stanislaus County By 1922, there were 27 community branches, housed In the Jail, church basements, and stores.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 20:11:09 +0000
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