The new Harvard Public Library will open its doors this Saturday, and the patterns of our daily lives will shift to integrate it into our community. I’ve watched the construction with studied anticipation, often considering its significance in the historic context of our town.
Over the past decade I’ve watched with alarm and sadness as our town center slowly loses its community anchors. The crossroads that have historically fed the social, institutional, and cultural life of our town have grown quieter, and while our attention has moved to developments outside the center, the once-vibrant core of our community is gradually becoming a relic.
The Library Building Committee could have chosen to build a pre-fab building on a plot of land on the outskirts of town—it would have been easier to design and cheaper to build—but the town would have ended up with an uninspired box designed to fulfill only its basic mission as a repository of books and materials. And it would have been one more community anchor drifting free of the town center.
Fortunately, the building committee recognized the importance of keeping the library close to the heart of the town and chose instead to tackle complex issues of historic building restoration by integrating Old Bromfield into the new library design. Beyond beautiful, the building integrates forward-thinking green technologies, making it an environmentally friendly and energy-efficient structure.
And while the building anticipates its future, it connects deeply to Harvard’s past. Its marriage of historical soul and modern function is an eloquent expression of what I believe Harvard as a collective community holds dear: its historical legacy and concern for the future. The project demonstrates that with extra commitment (and wise septic strategies) we can complete building projects within the confines of the town center. It provides a successful precedent for historical building reuse in Harvard.
Our new library is more than a simple repository of materials. It is a generous community space and architectural promise of historic memory. More importantly, it is an iconic reminder that the past can invigorate and inform the future.
Maggie Green
Poor Farm Road
