Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 23, 1993 TAG: 9302230258
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SHE'S STEAMED ABOUT FOUNTAIN
First thing Monday morning, when the doors swing open for business at Roanoke's busiest branch library, the place is as quiet as a library should be.But it sure smells bad.
"It smells like an old YMCA," notes Beverly James, wrinkling her nose. "Like you're waiting to smell the toe jam. Like wet towels."
She can get even more graphic than that and she does.
For five years, since she became the city's chief librarian, James has tolerated the conditions inside the Raleigh Court branch library, which sits on the campus of Patrick Henry High School. She has concealed her disdain for one of the most boneheaded architectural flourishes ever built in our city with taxpayer money.
No more. Beverly James wants the circular fountain at the center of the library removed, and she is asking city fathers to back her.
Eight feet across, surrounded by a squat brick ledge, the fountain gurgled to life at 11 minutes after 9 o'clock on Monday. The timer's been on the fritz. It spit and splashed water in a 2-foot-high cylinder, moistening the bricks and the carpet.
"I get an occasional little message from someone who just loves the fountain," said James, raising her voice to speak over the din of cascading water. She rolled her eyes, too.
Children may be mesmerized by the fountain. And they may delight in tossing a penny into the drink now and then - it amounts to three or four bucks every few months and the money goes into the library fund. The incessant roar of tumbling water may comfort some people poring over the nearby magazines.
But when you run a big fountain all day long, inside a closed library, you raise the humidity to rain-forest extremes.
James says that photocopy machines die prematurely. Book pages wrinkle and crinkle and warp. Bindings give out.
Beverly James' libraries have suffered the indignities of welcoming all of humanity's flotsam and jetsam.
At the Melrose branch, youngsters pried down a ceiling tile in a bathroom and established a clubhouse in the beams overhead. At Raleigh Court, someone urinated on a row of books. Outdoor patio furniture was strewn across a large adjacent field. Graffiti mars the stalls inside the bathrooms.
She understands the price of doing business with the public.
What she doesn't understand is why a library would inflict punishment on itself.
The Raleigh Court library was built in 1966. By 1982, the city spent $127,000 to expand the satellite branch. The project just about doubled the size of the place. In the same swoop, the ill-conceived fountain was added.
This was the same year the central library was expanded in Elmwood Park. The original plan called for a fireplace. At the last minute, the $10,000 hearth was ditched.
Someone had grand illusions about what a library ought to be: A good novel, a slice of brie, perhaps a Jacuzzi.
Raleigh Court librarians double as pool maintenance technicians. They add chemicals to keep the scuzz under control, a skill not ordinarily taught in the Dewey Decimal Academy.
Beverly James will have her critics. But she is calling a boondoggle for what it is.