Politics & Government
Taming the Library Park: A Work in Progress
Friends of the South End Library and active neighbors are revisiting the best way to utilize the space at the corner of Rutland and Tremont streets.
Whether in the city or out in the ‘burbs, parks are quite often lovely sanctuaries by day and covers for clandestine activities at night. Left unaddressed for too long, day and night begin to blur. These are just some of the issues being debated with regards to renovating the park space adjacent to the .
“The park has been a place of frustration, crime, peacefulness and beauty. As neighbors and Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL), we would like to preserve the latter and do away with the former,” said Marleen Nienhuis, former FOSEL President and current Advisory Board Officer, during a recent conversation.
The problem stems partially from the current design of the park, with its confined space, dark corners and shade encouraging activities like drinking and drug use, Nienhuis said. The fact that the library has the only public bathroom in the neighborhood further encourages overuse by the homeless, she added.
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"This discourages use by other people, especially because the current homeless population has a high percentage of sex offenders… who, admittedly, have a hard time finding shelter elsewhere," she said.
Nienhuis isn’t suggesting the space become exclusionary. On the contrary, she’s looking for ways to make the space welcoming to a larger, more balanced population sample. The answers don’t come easily.
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“The hope is that by creating spaces to be used for different purposes and an inviting path, or paths, from several sides, a more varied group of users will feel comfortable walking through and being there,” she explained. “Yesterday, a group of 10 or so people sat around, each with a book; someone started a ‘reading club’ there, very appropriate in light of it being a library park. Others would like to see a patio adjacent to the library with bistro tables and chairs—especially good if the WiFi could stay on after hours.”
“We’ve tried lots of different things to potentially affect peoples’ behavior in the park,” said longtime South End resident Gail Ide, calling from Woods Hole during a holiday weekend getaway. “We’ve even gone so far as to try locking it at night, but of course, others protested that we were being ridiculous.”
Ide has been in the neighborhood since 1976. She’s an avid library supporter, and recently she agreed to have a look at the situation from a designer’s perspective; Ide works for the historically-minded architectural firm Kunz Associates, located right on Greenwich Park.
“I thought it would be fun to put down some broad brush strokes,” she said, noting that proper drainage is one of her concerns.
“The first hoop is to develop a concept. It seems that people are enthused about involving an artist to design park furniture, which makes sense to me – it’s a modern library, it should have some modern art. And right there we’re taking a step toward better unifying the building and the park.”
Unifying the building and the outside space has been another major component of these discussions, going back several years to when a proposal was drawn up that would have brought the library out to the edge of the Rutland Street sidewalk via a two-story glass extension. There were multiple entrances drawn into the plan as well as reading alcoves and a café.
“There was a lot of energy around that," Ide said. "It was a dramatic and beautiful plan, but the reality of funding made those dreams impossible to reach for the time being.”
“Until we get better leadership at both the library and the city, that plan cannot happen,” Nienhuis said. “But in the meantime, the idea of integrating the park visually and functionally into the library is still an excellent idea.”
Ideas currently being tossed around include the installation of exercise and/or play equipment, a stone labyrinth, a dog park and a storytelling pit. Whatever the outcome, Ide is focused on making sure it gets done without cutting corners.
“The renovations that took place in 1991 have now deteriorated,” she said. “Historically, they haven’t ever really been done properly, going back to the beginning. Pretty soon after the library was built in 1971, the park sank.”
Current plans for park renovations remain in the early stages, Nienhuis said. The group is hoping to get a planning grant from the city to start a public process of planning and design sometime in the fiscal 2012/13 budget cycle. Meanwhile, members of the public are invited to submit comments to marleen.nienhuis@verizon.net.