Check It Out: Central Library Turns Page

BSI Constructors is at the peak of demolition and on course to have a massively renovated and restored downtown St. Louis Public Library ready to celebrate its centennial.

Waller McGuire, executive director of the St. Louis Public Library, said the $46 million construction project "will restore one of the world's great buildings" while also giving St. Louis "a modern library in a classical space."

Modern technology, and a judicious decision to move administrative offices to another building across the street, will allow the library to almost double the amount of public space in the building. Major changes will be made to the ground and third floors, the basement, and the stacks building.

Offices on the third floor have been demolished, creating "four enormous new rooms," McGuire said during a recent media tour, and also temporarily exposing steel girders in the ceiling. Those new areas will allow the library several firsts, including its first history area and first public rare book room. Interior demolition also uncovered the original skylight, which was blocked off and replaced by fluorescent lighting for 50 years.

Offices, the original lavatories, and space originally intended for a photographic studio on the ground floor also have been demolished to make way for large new public spaces.

In the basement, space formerly occupied by giant, 100-year-old boilers and a former coal storage room will be converted into a 244-seat auditorium. The 100-year-old waterproofing system, which consisted of two to six thicknesses of tar and felt in alternating layers, failed years ago, McGuire said, and will be replaced.

Seven stories of stacks have been removed from the stack building. The old stacks were famous for their glass tile floors, but did not meet modern safety or accessibility codes, McGuire said. Hayward Baker Geotechnical Construction is busy installing micropiles in the yellow clay that was under the stacks building to support a new building in the shell of the old. The new facility will feature a new Locust Street entrance and atrium and a cafe with new stacks above them. McGuire said modern shelving technology will allow the library to store just as many books in a smaller space, while the expansion of public spaces will allow the library to bring more of its collection out of the stacks to where the public can browse it.

Other new construction will include entirely new electrical, mechanical, data, and environmental systems; new glass bridges across the formerly hidden courtyard, opening that feature to public view for the first time; new elevators; and new restrooms.

The demolition work prior to construction will include the wholesale removal of hazardous materials - asbestos will be removed from inside the walls and lead paint, which was used heavily in the original construction in 1912, will be removed from surfaces.

Designed by New York architect Cass Gilbert, the original construction took four years and cost $1.4 million, not including $100,000 for furniture and lighting fixtures. The library opened to the public in 1912. The $46 million renovation is expected to take 18 months, which will allow the library to reopen in 2012.

McGuire said the library staff has been planning this renovation for at least 10 years and that Cannon Design was brought on as the architect two years ago. Although they had all of Gilbert's original drawings, "the building as built was different," McGuire said. For example, "you would find steel where you didn't expect it," he said. There were no major surprises, however.

"We did a lot of investigation - opening walls and drilling in floors - before we started," he said. So, at the 20 percent of completion point, "we are on time and on budget," he said.

What McGuire called the "surgical demolition" of the interior revealed one very interesting sign of just how popular the library has been. The one-and-a-half inch thick Tennessee marble tiles in front of the circulation desk were worn down on only one-quarter of an inch. McGuire said they will be replace with marble tiles from elsewhere in the building to preserve the Parthenon-inspired floor of the Delivery Hall.

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