Ms. Bookbinder Has Serials For Breakfast

The Rutherford Branch

Chapter 2

     The Rutherford B. Hayes Public Branch Library had been built by committee. This, by way of explaining why the exterior had finishes of brick, sandstone, marble, glazed terracotta, carved wood and cast concrete, in various contrasting and competing styles including but not limited to Second Empire, Classical, Romanesque, and Gothic Revival. Perhaps it could best be described in boiled down terms as an architectural stew. The structure was technically a Carnegie library, as it had been funded by Andrew Carnegie, the incredibly wealthy steel magnate of The Gilded Age, but he had distanced himself from the project once it became apparent just what a monstrosity was being built.

     He got off lightly. The architect hired for the project, a rather highly strung artiste of some renown, had to be shipped off to a sanitarium for treatment.

     The bad experience suffered with this particular library fortunately did not stop Mr. Carnegie from eventually funding many other fine libraries in towns and cities across the vast expanse of the country. His lesson had been learned. Henceforth he went about his further work mindful of the fact that if one wanted to practice philanthropy, it was prudent to do so in the absence of committees and with a few basic terms attached, to quell the tendency of overly bureaucratic groups of civic leaders and elected officials to turn everything into a slumgullion. 

     The citizenry, oblivious to the strife caused by said committees, was idiotically proud of their new library building and the many grotesqueries incorporated therein. Excessive ornamentation was the mode of the times; one simply could not have too much of it. This new addition to the municipality's vista was fairly dripping with the stuff. The entrance was a thing of rare beauty; the paneled front vestibule a tasteful transition from the outdoors to in. A columned interior atrium and high ceilings throughout inspired lofty thoughts, while sturdy oak library tables and chairs invited all in to partake freely in the noble search for wisdom and knowledge, provided one was able to find free time outside of the standard hundred hour work week. But then, the nicer parts of the city weren't built for the unwashed masses They were constructed more for the genteel folk who had time to appreciate such things and rarely sullied their hands with anything so debasing as work.

     Mere words failed to describe the expansive garden created outside the back of the structure. It sat next to the river and was done up in the then fashionable style of a Japanese Tea Garden, complete with ornamental ponds and streams, wandering paths, graceful moon bridges, small decorative stone pagodas, a large gazebo, trees with weeping foliage, smaller specimens of rare shrubs, and riots of colorful flowers. The library at this time was the only one in town. City Hall, also newly constructed with an impressive central dome, sat conveniently across the public square outside both buildings' stately front doors, and all in all that green square with its surrounding urban setting of profitable businesses and grand residences was the heart of it all; that particular section of town the fairest for miles around, most charming to behold, and too, too sublime.

     Alas, after a few decades, the center of town had shifted. This is hardly an uncommon leitmotif to life. Many things out there will experience disconcerting shifts of some sort as time rolls on. A new, modern City Hall was built several miles away with a new Main Library, and old City Hall was torn down. The green was broken up into lots, sold off one by one, built upon, and was now unrecognizable as the place where children had once frolicked under the watchful eyes of their governesses. Behind the library, the Japanese Tea Garden lost not only the flowers, ponds and streams, but most importantly, its funding as a municipal park. It had found a second use for some time by being fenced in to make a storage and maintenance yard for the city. Then, even this was deemed too much of a hassle and the area was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. All that remained behind the tattered fence were one and a half ancient trees, some rusted out remains of broken down utility vehicles, an overgrowth of weeds, and the old gazebo, which had been boarded up for use by the library as an overflow storage annex.