Provo city library story (2)

Provo’s Own Sleeping Beauty, Wide Awake Erin Mecklenburt and her family camped in the same spot each year to watch the Fourth of July Parade wend its way down University Avenue: the front of a three-story brick building with red shingles and sandstone steps. Erin’s mom attended kindergarten there, but since 1968, it had hosted only the ghosts of old educators and school children.

“For years, this building was dilapidated, and it had a fence around it,” Erin said. “But I always thought it was so pretty, because it still looked as it does but it was really run down. When they renovated it, I was excited to see what it had looked like before.”

Known at times as the Brigham Young Academy, the High School Building, and the Education Building, Erin’s wish came true when the building got a facelift, a seismic upgrade, and new employment as the Provo City Library.

“I just love this building,” Erin said.

Rescuing the library from demolition and long disuse was a daunting process, said library director Gene Nelson. Problems included diverting water from an underground river, building a foundation around an original boulder-and-slurry foundation, and earthquake-proofing it.

“A lot of challenges, but a lot of gratifications,” Nelson said.

A building that was once devoid of life now has a life of its own: library patrons peruse shelves for new reads, students study in one wing, and social events echo in the halls of the beautiful Academy Ballroom.

New York Times bestselling author, Leif Enger, addressed an audience of book enthusiasts in the Ballroom. Light diffused from the windows and lit a white-walled room with chandeliers and glossy wood floors.

Later, as he signed books in the art gallery, Enger appraised his historical host.

“The library is stunning. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one quite like it,” Enger said. “It’s quite an edifice. What an organization and what a save.”

The vision that saved the building matched the vision that initially produced it. The first principal, Karl Maeser, claimed that the late Brigham Young gave Maeser the design in a dream just days after the school’s first home, Lewis Hall, burned down.

Although the restoration process upgraded the building’s innards, it preserved the building’s Romanesque exterior and tradition of learning.

“The original founders [...] hoped that it would be a bastion of learning,” Nelson said. “I think that we have helped that legacy of learning continue forward.”

A frequenter of the library, Kelly Ford, added a bit of humor.

“I don’t mind paying late fines, because that means I get to come to the library,” Ford said.