Many hands, many years: New Westhampton library set for grand opening

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By Owen Boss
Staff Writer

Sometimes a community comes together for the long haul.

That certainly was the case with the construction of the new Westhampton Public Library.

At the Westhampton Fall Festival later this month, the culmination of the community's effort - which involved hundreds of volunteers and spanned more than a decade - will be celebrated with the library's grand opening.

Although the library on North Road quietly opened its doors in August, Euthecia Hancewicz, president of the Friends of the Westhampton Library, said the response from the community has already exceeded expectations.

"People have walked around inside and they've been saying 'Wow' about a lot of things," Hancewicz said. "The day the library quietly opened we had people coming in and children dragging their parents through the front door saying 'Come on, we have to see the new library.' "

The Fall Festival, a fundraising event for the library, will be held Sunday, Oct. 17. Tours of the library will be given at that time.

But it's taken awhile to get there.

Proponents of a new town library thumped that drum for more than a decade, bringing the plan before Town Meeting several times and failing to garner the two-thirds majority needed to raise about $2 million in taxes for construction of a larger library.

Despite failing, the third time was the charm, in a way. The Friends of the Westhampton Library and others supporting a new library changed their approach and decided to raise construction money through fundraisers instead of taxes. A slew of kooky events followed: Lounging for Literacy (which featured people in lawn chairs reading on the library grounds), a 24-hour Read-A-Thon, a Great Pumpkin Roll (a race to see whose pumpkin would roll the farthest down Stage Road), and Flock to the Library (a pink yard flamingo sale). Those events and other efforts yielded $660,000 for the library.

The library project got a boost in August 2008 when the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners awarded the town a construction grant totaling $1.1 million as part of the state's Public Library Construction Program.

The state grant and the Friends of the Library donations meant that the town had enough cash for construction of a larger library to finally proceed.

"Without the support of volunteers and help from people who were willing to provide their time and services at lower-than-usual prices, this project would have never been possible," said Library Building Committee member Tom Martin.

In order to relocate the former library's youth section, children from Westhampton formed a human chain - passing each book, one by one, to their new home across the street.The rest of the books, Hancewicz said, were transferred in a truck provided, free of charge, by a town resident.

"The outpouring of support has been so great from the beginning," Martin said. "We've relied on a mixture of community volunteers and people who are willing to work for lower rates than they normally would."

In the rear of the building, newly constructed terraces were constructed using stones removed on site. The terraces will serve as seating and staging areas for public events and educational programs.

The nearly 200-year-old building's new addition, Martin said, and the cupola that sits atop it, were built using what he called "vernacular architecture": a style which incorporates details from the original building into the new edifice.

Similar examples of the building style, he said, can be seen in homes and buildings dotting the town center.

The first floor of the original parsonage building and the new addition are divided into six rooms. They include the Sylvester Judd Reading Room; the young adult's room; the children's wing; the adult room; the circulation area; and a 60-seat community room.

The large desk in the main circulation area, Hancewicz said, was made by students at Easthampton's New England School of Architectural Woodworking in Easthampton.

"We came up with a design and then the students there modified and tweaked the designs to fit their educational needs," Hancewicz said. "We bought the wood and then they did all the work."

The top for the wooden desk, Martin said, is a piece of stone from the Ashfield stone quarry and will most likely be acquired by the town at a lower-than usual price.

"A lot of people have said we'll give you services or time at cost or with a minimal mark-up," Martin said.

Volunteers also crafted the 6-by-6-foot cupola, which was built in the Northwest Road workshop of woodworker and construction artist Douglas Thayer.

"That was an enormous piece of work, putting that cupola together and painting the molds," Martin said, pointing out that the owl that tops it was designed locally and was made out of leftover scraps of steel.

The library's new community room, Hancewicz said, will have a separate entrance allowing for access when the library is closed and will likely be used for art displays and town meetings that require more seating than a typical town board meeting. It's also going to be used for public events like talks and movies, including a talk by a Merriam-Webster editor on Nov. 4.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com