By Buffy Calvert
Norie Jackson, former Andes Public Library Trustee and avid reader, used to say, “I’m a reader. As soon as I finish a book, I pick up another. I’d be lost without a library!” Recently, a new volunteer looked up and asked, “Was this place always a library?”
Glad you asked, Elizabeth. It’s a fascinating story. 165 years ago, in 1839, John Bohlmann came from Germany to start a tannery, using the plentiful hemlock bark on our Andes hills and hides shipped around the Horn from California. He built a saltbox house for his family. In 1918, his daughter, Elisabeth Gorsch, donated the house and grounds to the Village of Andes with the provision that it be used as a public park and that the house “never be removed from its foundations,” although it could be enlarged or improved and other structures added.
The Village immediately decided to use the house as a public library, a use endorsed by Mrs. Gorsch who shipped a crate of books from her 5th Avenue apartment when the Andes Public Library was chartered by the state in 1922. She also approved the monument boulder, inscribed with names of the veterans of the Civil and 1st World Wars. She donated a 60-foot flag pole.
The thrifty Scots of Andes offered a residence on the west side of the house as a quid pro quo for acting as librarian. For 80 years, librarians from Mary Oliver to Vera Matthews simply opened the connecting door and set up shop.
By 1973 the small main room and the tiny children’s alcove were bursting at the seams. With a grant of $30,000 from the O’Connor Foundation, the Trustees doubled the area while preserving the roofline of the house. They did add wrought-iron pillars on the porch and a very ‘70s palette of avocado and orange within. Doris Smith, the librarian, must have reveled in her new space. The library Trustees enthusiastically contracted to provide its services to the Town of Andes, thus quadrupling the number of patrons.
In 2002, Librarian Vera Matthews moved into her own house on Main Street. The Trustees gratefully expanded into the vacant apartment, creating a Teen Room named for Norie Jackson, she who “would be lost without a library,” and had left a legacy in her will. They also set aside a small Community Room to meet the increasing requests of groups for a place to gather.
In 2006, the Trustees, looking at the warren of small rooms, their shelves, “packed full and overflowing,” (as an architectural reviewer put it,) and the wasted, inaccessible second floor, formed a Community Long Range Committee to explore possibilities, hired LEEDS certified Ashokan Architectural and Planning from Kingston, raised $100,000 locally to match a State construction grant and secured a $200,000 grant from O’Connor to be matched by new funds.
The Town Planning Board and the Town Councilmen approved. In the summer of 2008, Dennison Finn of Delhi set to work to create the renovated, restored building you see today: open, inviting, eco-friendly and full-to-bursting with eager children in the Pat & Walter Gladstone Room, chatting adults, absorbed laptop users, searchers on public computers and, in the Community Room or the gazebo by the stream, lively groups from Stitch Witches and the Classic Car Club to writers – early learners with a tutor, Writers in the Mountains stretching their craft and earnest editors putting out the Gazette.
Since the dissolution of the Village, we are chartered by NYS to the Town which pays staff salaries and maintenance. The Trustees must raise the secured a $200,000 grant from O’Connor to be matched by new funds.
The Town Planning Board and the Town Councilmen approved. In the summer of 2008, Dennison Finn of Delhi set to work to create the renovated, restored building you see today: open, inviting, eco-friendly and full-to-bursting with eager children in the Pat & Walter Gladstone Room, chatting adults, absorbed laptop users, searchers on public computers and, in the Community Room or the gazebo by the stream, lively groups from Stitch Witches and the Classic Car Club to writers – early learners with a tutor, Writers in the Mountains stretching their craft and earnest editors putting out the Gazette.
Since the dissolution of the Village, we are chartered by NYS to the Town which pays staff salaries and maintenance. The Trustees must raise the funds to buy books, DVDs, access to online research sources, audio books and movies, furniture, computers and supplies. And here on Main Street in pleasant Bohlmann Park, you see a miracle: a free, open, welcoming place to walk in, stay a while and take home treasures. ~