Save Kent Library
- by: Friends of Kent Modern
- recipient: Suffield Town Officials
Don't Demolish Landmark Library
Modern Design Makes Suffield Building Well Worth Keeping
The Kent Memorial Library in Suffield, a rare and remarkable work of modern architecture by an accomplished Connecticut architect, Warren Platner, is going to be needlessly and heedlessly demolished. In its place will be a new, much larger building that is likely to be quite ordinary.
Suffield officials offer the usual reasons why their current library building should be demolished. It is overcrowded, not energy-efficient, its systems are old and the roof leaks. Designed to hold 51,000 books, the library holds 91,000. Three times as many people use the library as in the 1970s. According to current building codes, some spaces are not considered accessible to the disabled and, built a decade before America saw the Apple Macintosh, its design did not anticipate the e-resources we now take for granted.
These are not the faults of the building; they are a function of the passage of time and could readily be corrected. The building has been well cared-for. It was built with stone, brick, concrete and wood to last generations. As for energy efficiency, it could take generations of reduced energy costs in a new building to pay for the cost of demolition, the cost of replacement and the loss of the embedded energy in the existing building.
Suffield's thrifty New England forefathers would never have done such a thing. They would have added and renovated. With sound, practical reasons to save the Kent Memorial Library aplenty, the real reason it should not be demolished is because it is irreplaceable.
The artfully wrought interior space is a revelation of the capacity we have as humans to appreciate and enjoy the world we live in - and to interpret and share our experience through the things we make. Very few libraries treat the book or the reader with such honor and care, and with as much attention to the act of reading. Each of its public spaces was conceived as a room, like the library in a house, as a warm and intimate space that welcomes the individual.
And because for reading there must be light, its spaces have abundant natural light. And because one of the purposes of reading is to increase our knowledge and appreciation of the world we live in, the building has large windows that connect indoors to outdoors, placing the act of reading in the world that the reader inhabits.
As accomplished in interior architecture as any architect of his generation, Platner also took care to ensure that the library building was as at home in its outdoor setting as a wing chair by an open hearth. White-painted brick on a plinth of Connecticut's Stony Creek granite, and with broad, deep roof overhangs, the current Suffield library fits beautifully into its setting.
It is dedicated to being a New England building - a Main Street building - doing everything that its residential neighbors do, but at an elevated scale, and with materials that are noble and intended to last.
The Kent Memorial Library is modern - unlike its neighbors. But these neighbors run the style spectrum from American Vernacular, Georgian, Carpenter Gothic and Greek Revival to Victorian, Italianate and Federal style. Each house, when built, was in one of the styles of the day. Each was an expression of a larger, more sophisticated world, brought home. Although each house is somewhat different from its neighbors, each house is placed on a lawn and framed by trees, which creates a sense of unity.
Warren Platner's library conforms closely to this pattern - built in a style of its time, set on its lawn and framed by its trees. It is part of that unity.
It is common for one generation to devalue the artifacts of a previous generation, and to remove to the attic the once-cherished objects of its parents, only to witness with a kind of bemused but pleased surprise a succeeding generation recover them to places of honor. If, perhaps, the special qualities of the Kent Memorial Library are lost on Suffield today, they will be rediscovered by a next generation - or would be, if the library remained.
Outside Suffield there is already that next generation, one that does not want to see the best architecture of the modern period disappear. Too many beautiful modern buildings in Connecticut are already gone and those left to save are sadly few. Warren Platner's vision of what a public library can be, and how it can touch us, is a gift of the human spirit, which is something of immeasurable value.
It was a gift not to only to Suffield and to Connecticut, but to America. It would be a needless shame if, in Suffield, the current generation were to close its ears now to what it knows others are saying about its library, only to hear in just a few years from their children about how much they regret both the loss of their unique library and the unfortunate decision of their parents to do away with it.
By RICHARD MUNDAY
September 30, 2007
Richard Munday, AIA, is a partner in the New Haven architecture firm of Herbert S. Newman and Partners.
Sign PetitionSign PetitionModern Design Makes Suffield Building Well Worth Keeping
The Kent Memorial Library in Suffield, a rare and remarkable work of modern architecture by an accomplished Connecticut architect, Warren Platner, is going to be needlessly and heedlessly demolished. In its place will be a new, much larger building that is likely to be quite ordinary.
Suffield officials offer the usual reasons why their current library building should be demolished. It is overcrowded, not energy-efficient, its systems are old and the roof leaks. Designed to hold 51,000 books, the library holds 91,000. Three times as many people use the library as in the 1970s. According to current building codes, some spaces are not considered accessible to the disabled and, built a decade before America saw the Apple Macintosh, its design did not anticipate the e-resources we now take for granted.
These are not the faults of the building; they are a function of the passage of time and could readily be corrected. The building has been well cared-for. It was built with stone, brick, concrete and wood to last generations. As for energy efficiency, it could take generations of reduced energy costs in a new building to pay for the cost of demolition, the cost of replacement and the loss of the embedded energy in the existing building.
Suffield's thrifty New England forefathers would never have done such a thing. They would have added and renovated. With sound, practical reasons to save the Kent Memorial Library aplenty, the real reason it should not be demolished is because it is irreplaceable.
The artfully wrought interior space is a revelation of the capacity we have as humans to appreciate and enjoy the world we live in - and to interpret and share our experience through the things we make. Very few libraries treat the book or the reader with such honor and care, and with as much attention to the act of reading. Each of its public spaces was conceived as a room, like the library in a house, as a warm and intimate space that welcomes the individual.
And because for reading there must be light, its spaces have abundant natural light. And because one of the purposes of reading is to increase our knowledge and appreciation of the world we live in, the building has large windows that connect indoors to outdoors, placing the act of reading in the world that the reader inhabits.
As accomplished in interior architecture as any architect of his generation, Platner also took care to ensure that the library building was as at home in its outdoor setting as a wing chair by an open hearth. White-painted brick on a plinth of Connecticut's Stony Creek granite, and with broad, deep roof overhangs, the current Suffield library fits beautifully into its setting.
It is dedicated to being a New England building - a Main Street building - doing everything that its residential neighbors do, but at an elevated scale, and with materials that are noble and intended to last.
The Kent Memorial Library is modern - unlike its neighbors. But these neighbors run the style spectrum from American Vernacular, Georgian, Carpenter Gothic and Greek Revival to Victorian, Italianate and Federal style. Each house, when built, was in one of the styles of the day. Each was an expression of a larger, more sophisticated world, brought home. Although each house is somewhat different from its neighbors, each house is placed on a lawn and framed by trees, which creates a sense of unity.
Warren Platner's library conforms closely to this pattern - built in a style of its time, set on its lawn and framed by its trees. It is part of that unity.
It is common for one generation to devalue the artifacts of a previous generation, and to remove to the attic the once-cherished objects of its parents, only to witness with a kind of bemused but pleased surprise a succeeding generation recover them to places of honor. If, perhaps, the special qualities of the Kent Memorial Library are lost on Suffield today, they will be rediscovered by a next generation - or would be, if the library remained.
Outside Suffield there is already that next generation, one that does not want to see the best architecture of the modern period disappear. Too many beautiful modern buildings in Connecticut are already gone and those left to save are sadly few. Warren Platner's vision of what a public library can be, and how it can touch us, is a gift of the human spirit, which is something of immeasurable value.
It was a gift not to only to Suffield and to Connecticut, but to America. It would be a needless shame if, in Suffield, the current generation were to close its ears now to what it knows others are saying about its library, only to hear in just a few years from their children about how much they regret both the loss of their unique library and the unfortunate decision of their parents to do away with it.
By RICHARD MUNDAY
September 30, 2007
Richard Munday, AIA, is a partner in the New Haven architecture firm of Herbert S. Newman and Partners.
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