Back in 2000, Massachusetts library consultant Marjorie Judd came ashore to brainstorm with the relevant parties – the trustees of the Oak Bluffs Public Library, the Friends of the Oak Bluffs Public Library, library staff, the Cottage City Historic District commissioners, and town selectmen. Her aim: to draw up the consummate wish list for the design of the town’s proposed new library. Some participants hoped to capture the cozy, “cottage” feel of the current library, consistent with the town’s overall pride in its cuteness. Others used the word “quaint.”

If there’s one thing the new library ain’t, it’s quaint. “It’s large, grand, and beautiful,” said library trustee Irene Gaines on a July tour of the site with fellow building committee members. Nearly 18,000 square feet, the building on Pacific Avenue, next to town hall, is about as cottagelike as a trophy mansion on the Edgartown Great Pond.

The old library, located downtown in a former grocery store built in 1907 (it’s been the library since 1930), is to be closed Labor Day weekend to prepare for the move uptown. Anyone who ever stepped inside this tiny building on a non-beach day during the high season knows the library’s limitations were astonishing. Staffers worked elbow to elbow. Browsers browsed butt to butt. The children’s area was awash with adults – seasonal workers from Russia, vacationers from New Jersey, day-trippers from the cruise ships – waiting for their turns at six Internet-access computers. The second floor was condemned in the 1970s, and the skimpy shelf and storage space that remained meant that new materials couldn’t be added to the collection without displacing some of the old. Parking? Forget it. Chilmark, by contrast, with one-third the year-round population of Oak Bluffs, has a library three times as spacious and a collection two-and-a-half times as large.

When Massachusetts announced the availability of new library grants six years ago, Oak Bluffs could hardly ignore the call. Among the state’s stipulations: The library design had to accommodate the size of the town twenty years down the road. According to projections of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, Oak Bluffs’s winter population will likely grow from 3,830 in 1999 to 6,032 in 2019 and to more than 8,000 by 2025. If you multiply those numbers by six, you get a rough idea of the population estimates for the summer seasons. Hence, Oak Bluffs has a $3.8 million mega-library today. It’s designed by Boston architects Amsler, Woodhouse and MacLean. Kenneth MacLean, incidentally, has a residence in Oak Bluffs’s Harthaven area.
Buoyed by a provisional award of $1.59 million from the state in 2002, Oak Bluffs voters committed another $2 million in town funds and approved a campaign to raise $800,000 in contributions. According to recently retired library director Linda Norton, who sweated six years of planning and proposing, the town approval process was relatively smooth. “There were some ups and downs, but no violence,” she says. In Oak Bluffs, where tenacious voters and selectmen have fought the Hundred Years’ War over sewers and golf courses, the blessing of the library was tantamount to a group hug. Construction began in May 2004.

Library trustee and building committee chairman Karen Achille acknowledges that the first reaction of townspeople passing the construction site is typically, “Oh, my God!” or, “You’re building this for the summer people.” Some regret the library’s retreat from downtown. Taxpayers may look askance. But once they get over the shock of the vast exterior, she says, they’re eager to know what’s inside. “It’s like the movie Field of Dreams,” says the ebullient tour guide. “If you build it, they will come.”

The inside – with its high second-story ceilings, extensive glass, and scarcity of walls – looks pretty vast, too. The color palette is of Tuscan hues – burgundy, gold, and a little purple. Berber carpeting covers most of the floors. The double-door entry frames a majestic staircase with red-oak railings. High over the stairs is a wall space that will be the “canvas” for a frieze by Vineyard muralist Margot Datz, who is known for her mural inside the Steamship Authority terminal in Vineyard Haven.

Even on a hazy morning, natural light floods the second story. Large pendant lamps will soon hang from three vaulted ceiling areas. “For the middle, we originally picked a chandelier that looks like a large artichoke,” says trustee Bob Ford, a generously bearded gent whom Achille lovingly calls an old coot. “It was shot down due to Yankee frugality.”
Nearly half the second floor is devoted to a children’s area painted in vivid yellow. “They’re our future as library patrons,” says Achille. A separate children’s programs room behind glass doors is intended for crafts and other busywork. At the center of the floor is a spacious reference area and a young-adult room, or “hormone heaven,” says Achille. More seriously: “We’ve never had a young-adult area before. They need their own space.” In July, their space still served as temporary storage for the hardwood benches and rockers that will furnish the future patio.

There are plentiful facilities for Internet access, wireless and wired. There’s also a restroom with a great view, for whatever that’s worth. An enclosed historical room – a wish granted to the Cottage City Historic District Commission – will house archival materials significant to Oak Bluffs’s heritage. It will also double as a small conference room, seating up to sixteen people. An electronically controlled screen will facilitate PowerPoint and slide presentations. According to Bill Kuusela, project superintendent for Connecticut-based contractor Barr Inc., all the mechanicals in the building are state-of-the-art. “You can change the temperature in any room by phone from anywhere in the world,” he says. Imagine the maintenance staff holding down the fort in February from, say, Cancun.

Descending the stairs, keen-eyed patrons will spot a familiar stained-glass rendering by Island sculptor Barney Zeitz. The work moves to the space over the front door from its former spot in the old library. Express e-mail stations will be placed near the front door for the convenience of Island visitors who want to make quick contact with family or friends. “That’s our concession to the summer people,” says Ford. The periodicals area invites less hurried patrons to read and relax in a bright, windowed alcove.

As an added service to the town, the trustees have set aside a large space for a community meeting room seating up to seventy-five people. The two-story ceiling gives the room a “sense of aesthetic grandeur,” says Achille. Features include a dedicated entrance from the thirty-six-car parking lot, audiovisual equipment, and a hospitality area for serving coffee or snacks. Trustees envision the space being used during and after library hours by groups such as the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club.

Last but not least, the staff area is wondrous. It features an expansive circulation desk, a roomy back office, substantial storage, a materials area for cataloguing and repairs, a break room with a mini-kitchen, and a staff-only restroom. “The staff gets really silly when they see this space,” says Achille. Looking delighted, if not quite silly, new library director Danguole Budris soaks up the promising environs of her private, one-woman office space.  
The timetable ran a few months past the expected completion date, due to a hard winter and the contractor’s learning curve on Vineyard logistics. But according to Achille, costs have stayed within budget. Perhaps in keeping with that Yankee frugality, some shelves and tables from the old library are being refurbished and resettled in the new. The trustees hope to open the library to the public by the end of September. A formal dedication, complete with mainland dignitaries, will take place later.

The look and feel of the new library may have exceeded the expectations of the populace. But while the building committee gave up “cozy” and “quaint” in the interest of practicality, they were hell-bent on achieving the sense of invitation, comfort, and friendliness that patrons valued most in the old facility. “They’re afraid of it now, but once they’re inside, they’ll feel welcome,” says Kuusela, the builder, who confesses to being intimidated by libraries when he was a child.

In 2004, Oak Bluffs established a Town Campus Design Committee, which sees the new library as the first building in a complex that will include an expanded town hall and perhaps a new police station. Cozy-crusaders and taxpayers: stay tuned.