Alexandra Pais/New Jersey Local News Service The historic Connett Memorial Building.
SOUTH ORANGE — With an eye toward the future, library officials are peering into the institution’s past.
With its current building packed near floor to ceiling with books, computers, magazines, DVD’s, and other materials, the library’s community meeting space has been squeezed into a small, windowless room on the ground floor.
Library officials, who for years sought space for both patrons and materials, are eyeing the Connett Memorial Building 20 feet away on Scotland Road, which was the village library for over 70 years until 1968.
A $50,000 grant from the Garden State Historic Preservation Trust Fund and a partial match from the village is funding a preservation plan for the Connett, a Romanesque Revival structure of brick and sandstone completed in 1896.
“Nothing structural has ever been done to the building,” the library director, Melissa Kopecky, said. “What was originally there is for the most part still there.”
The building, owned by the village, is named after Eugene V. Connett, who founded a hat manufacturing company in 1920 and as library board president in 1895 donated the land on condition that a library be built on the site.
Although the Connett, with its red slate roof, retains its historic flavor and most of its architectural accents, such as a brick fireplace, oak trim and Norman arched entryway, the building has weathered.
“It’s a beautiful building, but it needs some work,” the library board’s president, Thomas A. Henry, said.
One scenario would merge the two buildings by way of an atrium, but with some start-up money now in hand, library officials will soon seek feedback and suggestions from residents,” Kopecky said.
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