The lights are on inside. It'll be home before we know it!

Earth Day, which is now a 38-year old tradition, has become Earth Week, Earth Month, and maybe just Earth everyday. If the websites, fashion designers, authors, activists, corporations and “Green Issues” of every other magazine out there are to be believed, then Green is the new hip.

Environmental responsibility is just that: a responsibility. True stewardship isn’t just a passing fancy, and while it’s great that green is in, it isn’t a hot new label we should slap on everything to feel better about ourselves and our relationship with our planet. There are plenty of resources for going green in your daily life, for measuring and reducing your carbon footprint- the little changes that are doable and that make a difference. But how often do we get the chance to overhaul something big?

The New Darien Library is on track to being LEED Gold Certified- the third LEED certified library in New England (the first at the Gold level). The building’s heating and cooling system will be geothermal, the carpeting and paint will be low-VOC, the parking lot will have an underground reservoir to capture storm water so it doesn’t run off, and a bioswale adjacent to filter out contaminants. And of course, there are the dual-flush toilets.

So, green buildings are the hot new thing and the library is being trendy? Perish the thought. The New Darien Library is being built to stand the test of time. The slate roof is going on this week. Why slate? Well, it’s lovely to look at, but more importantly, it will last for at least 100 years. Large windows? They’re for “day-lighting,” which reduces the need for lights on all day long everywhere in the building. The new building is addressing the environmental concerns of today by being a building of and for the future. We’ll be sure to let you know when we’re loaning out solar-powered jet packs.

Have a look at our Darien Library shorts. These were created by John Blyberg, our clever, innovative and savvy "techie visionary." (Is that your official title, John?) We think these video shorts are cool, and thought you would, too!

MARCH 2008

Our webcam caught the action as we began the visible progress of the building, and has continued to record day after day.

We’ve been putting the time-lapse videos on YouTube and onto our website. Just in case you’ve missed them, the videos from November 2007 through February 2008 are below. They are such fun to watch.

NOVEMBER 2007

DECEMBER 2007

JANUARY 2008

FEBRUARY 2008

We’ve gone from dirt to foundation to walls to steel to roof to cinderblock. What the videos don’t show is the mechanicals and the fireproofing, all well underway.

We’ll have March’s video up any day now. Check back here and on our home page and watch our progress. We don't need time-lapse photography to show our smiles. Share the excitement!

JANUARY 2008

FEBRUARY 2008

DECEMBER 2007

NOVEMBER 2007

This is a picture I took on Friday, January 18th in the afternoon when construction had finished for the day, and I could walk on the slab of the first floor.

The view is looking up from the first floor through the space of the second floor towards North from approximately where our patrons will enter the building when it is opened in January 2009. From where I took the picture, when the building is open you would be standing on Main Street, as we call it -- the active central core of the building, with a concierge desk, new books, self-check machines and cafe tables where you can sit and have some coffee while talking with your friends.

I was thinking when I took the pictures, that soon -- three or four months from now -- no one will be able to see the structural steel, when it is covered over. And that's really a metaphor for how something gets planned and built, isn't it? Some of the most important aspects of a successful outcome depend on basic elements that are there, but aren't obvious.

You just had to be there on a cold day in January to see these important parts of the new building -- a building designed to last for a hundred years -- before they get hidden away by the brick, slate, tile and carpeted floors, wall board and millwork. We'll admire the parts of the building we can see when it's finished, but we should respect the structure that we won't be able to see, but will depend on unconsciously.

In order to move into the new building, we'll also have to close the existing Darien Library at the same time, and that means we are beginning the last year when we will occupy this beloved library, built in 1957 and expanded twice, and now a model for what a library can mean to its community.

Who could have known while the building was still a dream, what wonderful things were to come?

From concrete, and steel, and wood, and sweat come dreams and reality.

Mostly, the library is about people who have become friends in a community of common interest.

So in the months we have left in this wonderful library, let's remember that bricks and steel are the skin and bone of a library, but people are its soul.

The shadow of its passing after a half century of vibrant life in the community will give way to a bright future in another building -- a New Darien Library that will serve as the great good place for the people of Darien as it carries on the traditions of the present building.

The foundation floor and walls have been laid, and the first floor is being formed and poured.

This is the view from our newly installed web cam, high up on a post over the construction shack:

From this time on, progress is going to be more visible, and here's a schedule:

October-November-December 2007
Concrete foundation complete
Drill remaining geo-thermal wells
Erect Steel Superstructure

January-February-March 2008
Pour concrete slabs
Begin CMU back-up Walls (weather permitting)
Weather tight roof
Weather tight window openings
Install Mechanical duct work
Install Rough Plumbing
Begin Cast Stone & Masonry Veneer
Begin slate roof

April-May-June 2008
Install Windows
Continue Cast Stone & Masonry Veneer
Continue slate roof
Building systems ongoing

July-August-September 2008
Begin Interior finishes
Begin Final Grading

October-November-December 2008
Interior finishes ongoing
Finish site work paving and landscaping
Punchlist
Commissioning of building systems
Move Equipment and collection

January 2009

Grand Opening!

We could not be more excited to watch progress being made on the New Darien Library, and if you want to join in the fun, go to our web site and click on the web cam picture to grab a web cam perspective. No hard hat required.

Some of the planning gets pretty detailed. Here are Kim Huffard, President of the Library Board, and Peter Gisolfi, the Library's architect, together with Cheng Hsun Wu, also of Peter Gisolfi Associates, deep in an examination of a model of the New Darien Library's central core -- Main Street, with the Reference Room above and the Power Library below:

We won't be moving into the new building until late fall 2008, so it's almost 18 months until patrons will be able to experience some of our new design ideas. But here's a sneak preview of our thinking about the best way to make now books and books on CD available -- we've created a bookshop on Main Street, which will be stacked high with all our recent arrivals:

Library visitors will probably enter from the door on the lower left, and they'll then be in the Main Street area, with a welcome desk in front of them. Main Street goes from the left (where the auditorium, cafe, DVDs, CDs and older fiction stacks are, to the right, where the Children's Room is. In the middle is Main Street, with cafe tables and chairs set on the streetscape, and behind it the bookshop, with all our newest books, some of them set out in front, on the sidewalk.

There will be an area of shelves in the back left where patrons can pick up their own reserved books, and self-check stations where books and other items can be checked out quickly. Library staff will be freed up to spend more time helping patrons find just the books they want, since they won't be chained to a circulation desk. We expect our design will allow patrons who are looking for our newest fiction and non-fiction books to get what they want and get going in record time. Or, they can grab a couple of new books, and sit down to look them over, while having some coffee and talking to friends.

By the way, this is a study model, and what's missing is a sense of the wonderful design elements Peter Gisolfi has used -- patterned tile floor, brick, wood, lighting and technology -- that will make this a stunning space. For that, you're just going to have to wait for the grand opening. It'll be worth it.

The excavation gives a sense of the new building's size:

Construction will last until the end of 2008, when we'll be able to move into the new building. Between now and then, there will be lots to see, but when we're done, you can be sure that the critical work going on now will be nowhere in sight. For example, here is the footing of Elevator B, which staff members will use when they are moving books and other items from floor-to-floor:

In the end, the quality of the new building will depend on the efforts of two men more than anyone else, the Senior Project Manager, Frank Fazekas, and the Project Superintendent, Mark Moran (by the way, Mark's mom works in a library nearby.) Here they are:

Probably in August or September, contractors will begin erecting the steel structure of the building, but until then, all the work will take place below ground level. What's going on down there represents an important shift in the project, however.

We are no longer getting ready.

We now are building the New Darien Library, and we couldn't be more excited.

From one generation to another

Darien Library is successful because it is a Library for each person in the community, from senior citizens to the youngest children. The existing building was a gift to the Town of Darien made under the leadership of Harold McGraw fifty years ago, still enjoyed by newer generations today.

The New Darien Library is a gift to future generations, made under the leadership of Kim Huffard and George Wyper, co-chairs of the Capital Campaign, with the guidance and support of Harold McGraw, and others such as Ann and Steve Mandel. Construction has now begun, and over the next eighteen months we'll be able to watch concrete poured and steel rise, brick and stone laid, glass and metal installed, trees planted, furniture and technology and finally, books, all come together in the Fall of 2008 at a Grand Opening.

And in between, more fundraising, and discussion of plans for new programs and events, quiet spaces to read, active places to meet and talk to friends, children's spaces, technology spaces, study spaces.

But for the moment, let's savor this image, an accomplished and thoughtful man, who has been at all four groundbreaking events in the history of Darien Library, the man "who almost single-handedly got the [first] library built" reaching out to a younger generation, and showing us all what it means to be great.

What a fabulous event!