Mayor Lightfoot loves libraries and gives the city a trio of new ones on South and West Side as parting gifts
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My father and his brother, children of immigrants, grew up near Humboldt Park. When they were young and not playing in the parks, streets or the alleys of their neighborhood, they could be found at the library that was a block from their apartment, devouring books.
They were not unusual then, in that they were part of a vast crowd of youngsters for whom libraries were essential and inspirational parts of life.
Times change. Amazon delivers.
But some encouraging news arrived with the announcement of three new Chicago Public Library outposts: a new Woodlawn branch and two new libraries that will be part of mixed-use developments in Back of the Yards and Humboldt Park.
Lori Lightfoot, the bruised outgoing mayor, has so far been reluctant to grant my Tribune colleagues’ requests for an exit interview, but she did offer some words for a news release, saying she looks “forward to seeing these new libraries become hubs of activity and lifelong learning.”
She loves libraries, once telling me that she has “fond memories” of the library across the street from her junior high school in Massillon, Ohio, where she could “explore the world, have the librarians help you explore the world and help you with homework.”
Her library affection is surely further fueled by her wife, Amy Eshleman, who was the assistant commissioner for the CPL during the lengthy tenure of estimable commissioner Mary Dempsey. They used multimillion-dollar investments to open new modern branches and renovated old ones.
We live, many of us, removed from libraries. We’ve got smartphones, iPads, Google and the easy ability to Wiki-whatever. Many of us deem libraries as artifacts of our youth, dusty memories sitting next to those of Riverview, pitching pennies and dial telephones.
So be it, but a vast number of people lack the means to buy computers or books, movies or CDs. To them, libraries are oases that allow people to plug in to our plugged-in age. As such, they become vital parts of life as they become accustomed to this strange new world.
This new trio of locations will increase the number of CPL spaces to nearly 80.
The first? It opened in 1873, with these words from Mayor Joseph Medill: “The influence and power of a city, state or nation is not measured by its numbers but by its enlightenment, by its thinkers ... ” Smart guy, he also owned the Tribune.
This library was inside a converted water tank at LaSalle and Adams streets, packed with 8,000 books, many from such notable Brits as Queen Victoria, John Stuart Mill and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and from thousands of others, in response to news that 3 million books that had been in storage in the city had burned in the Great Chicago Fire two years before.
In 1897, the library moved into the magnificent building on Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Washington streets, still standing and operating as the Cultural Center.
Generations spent time there and in what would be the branch libraries that began to dot the city. But for a disgracefully lengthy time, Black neighborhoods were ignored until a prominent Black doctor named George Cleveland Hall convinced philanthropist Julius Rosenwald of the need for a library in Bronzeville.
Rosenwald, the head of Sears, Roebuck & Co., bought land at the corner of 48th Street and Michigan Avenue and gave it to the city. A library rose there, opening in January 1932 it was named for Hall and headed by Vivian Harsh, the city’s first Black librarian.
You can visit it still, this handsome building made of Indiana limestone, with an octagonal rotunda with terrazzo tile, brass ornaments and dark English oak.
You can visit any of the city’s libraries, such as the oldest, which would be the Blackstone at 4904 S. Lake Park Ave. Built in 1904, it was the city’s first branch library. Isabella Norton Blackstone provided the funds for it to honor her late husband, Timothy Beach Blackstone, a railroad executive and the first president of the Union Stockyards. The architect was Solon S. Beman, who also designed much of Pullman, the Fine Arts Building, a few Hyde Park homes and a couple buildings for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
When you have a look at the CPL website, I think you’ll be pleasantly shocked by the mountain of information and events. I would direct your attention to the tours led by the ebullient author/professor/historian Max Grinnell.
As the CPL system celebrates its 150th anniversary, realize that it exists for all of us, but primarily serves those who cannot afford to buy the latest hardcover books or computers. Most locations have lively cultural programming, book clubs and help for people searching for jobs or trying for a GED diploma. Sometimes they simply offer a quiet and safe place to sit, to think, to dream.
During the Depression, future Nobel Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow spent time in our libraries, later saying, “there were no jobs, (I read) at the public library, along with out-of-work lawyers and other professional people.” Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and filmmaker David Mamet too hung out there, in the main library downtown, later saying, with great fondness, “My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.”
