From the bcct:
By: MANASEE WAGH
Bucks County Courier Times
MORRISVILLE
Fred Kerner inhaled deeply as cool air whooshed past him through the open front door of the Morrisville Free Library on Saturday.
"Ahh, smell that new air," said Kerner, a borough resident who looked forward to the library's reopening after more than a month of renovations, including adding central air conditioning. While he looked for videos, his wife Linda searched for books to read during their vacation.
"We love it. It's really a central place in the community," Kerner said.
Inside, sun glimmered through tall, multicolored cathedral windows. A wrought iron pattern, once the separator between altar and congregation from the building's church days, wound its way to the ceiling. Adult fiction lined shelves in the space the altar had once occupied. Before the renovation, most of the ironwork was covered by books, but they've been moved aside as part of the makeover, said Diane Hughes, the library's director.
"We're still making it more user-friendly. We are so happy finally to be open," she said.
The library underwent about $200,000 in renovations with a Community Development Block Grant, said Dorothy Gaydula, acting borough manager, who was busy stacking books.
It also got fresh paint and an early literacy station using a Peco Energy grant. Library patrons can also use several computers for free.
If there's one detail Hughes wishes were different, it would be the ability to see the cathedral's original ceiling, hidden above a drop ceiling that also covers air conditioning piping and wiring.
When the Episcopal Church on Pennsylvania Avenue moved, the library took over the building in 1967. The building's history stretches to 1904, when the local Women's League started a lending library in the parlor of one of its members.
Initially populated by 500 books on religion, the library grew and moved multiple times over the years until it settled finally into the former church. By that time, the Women's League had decided the library should be taken over by the municipality and the citizens of Morrisville had agreed.
In the early 1970s, Morrisville's public library joined several others to create Bucks County Public Libraries, an interlinked system that allows patrons to put borrowing materials on hold and pick them up at any branch.
"It was a state initiative to have all the libraries serve all Bucks residents without geographical boundaries," said Chris Snyder, the district consultant for Bucks County Public Libraries.
When the recent economic problems began, the state reduced funding to public libraries. At the same time, circulation doubled, Hughes said.
"It's very popular," Hughes said. "We have people waiting in the morning for the doors to open and people here till it closes. Because of the foresight of the Women's League 100 years ago, we have a library today."
