Shaw Library Demolition, Reconstruction Under Way

After years of inaction, the process of re-constructing the D.C. Public Library’s Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Branch seems on-track. A new temporary library hums with activity, demolition of the old building well underway, and a meeting scheduled later this month to reveal a preliminary design for the new building.

Interim Watha T. Daniel/Shaw LibraryLast October, a well-equipped temporary library opened on the grounds of Shaw Junior High roughly two years since the old Watha T. Daniel branch closed. The temporary library is equipped with a children’s section, periodicals, a number of public computers, and variety of books, and a visit this afternoon found a number of people reading, browsing the stacks, and surfing the web.

Library officials have planned a community meeting to unveil the preliminary design for the new library, to be held on Wednesday, January 30th at the interim library from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

For the last several weeks construction crews have begun the painstaking task of the careful demolition of the brutalist 1960s structure, revealed in the photos below to be heavily reinforced concrete.

March 2006
Watha T. Daniel Library

January 2008
Watha T. Daniel Library Demolition

March 2006
Watha T. Daniel Library

January 2008
Watha T. Daniel Library Demolition

Watha T. Daniel Library Demolition

While I haven’t visited recently, during a visit last August I found the system’s long-beleaguered Martin Luther King Memorial Library to be in the best shape I’ve ever seen it. All four elevators were in operation, which hadn’t happened in so long the Washington Post saw fit to report the news. The lobby was so clean and well-lit it reminded me of the historic photos I’d found from when the building just opened, perhaps fitting as the building was declared a historic landmark by the city last July.

Circa 1972
DCPL WA Col40 B7 out a.JPG

August 2007
Lobby, MLK Memorial Library

> DCPL Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library Reconstruction Page
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Author: Rob Goodspeed

Comments

  1. I got to your site through one of your flickr photos and saw an interesting similarity in our recent blogs. Go to jeanfitz.wordpress.com to see my own before and after pictures of my neighbor’s house. Is it demolition season?

  2. Pingback: Watching the Results Online - The Goodspeed Update

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