Allan Appel photo
Board Chair Maryann Ott with State Sen. Looney.
Institute Library Executive Director Jan Swiatek won’t have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning for much longer to worry about rain pouring through the historic Chapel Street bookspace’s roof — thanks to a major renovation-funding grant approved by the state.
The Institute’s faithful gathered at the 847 Chapel St. private library on Wednesday evening to celebrate $1.725 million in state funds heading its way thanks to a recent approval by the State Bond Commission.
Priorities for those coming upgrades include: a full-scale restoration that includes a complete replacement of the century-old roof; an HVAC system that will service and make usable all five floors of the building; a sprinkler and fire protection system and an elevator that will open up the basement and top floor gallery to a whole range of new uses.
Wednesday’s fête also represented a public thank you to New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney for helping secure that aid.
The money, to be augmented through private donations and other grants, will bolster and improve the much loved historical structure’s physical plant, assuring the unique space will continue to be both a quiet refuge and, increasingly, a magnet for cultural, community, and bookish events for generations to come.
As Executive Director Swiatek, wearing a 19th Century style hat, put it more practically on Wednesday: “Now I won’t have to wake up at 3:00 a.m. worrying that rain is again pouring through the roof.”
Board member Laura Boyer with Executive Director Jan Swiatek
In a truly festive event beneath an impressively water damaged ceiling in the long second floor gallery, more than 100 people gathered to celebrate the coming long-needed repairs and improvements to the historic 1875 building.
Architect and Institute Library board member Joe Banks said no schedules have yet been set and bids have not been sent out.
Without an elevator, which makes possible universal access, the library has not been eligible for a whole range of grant support, said Banks. With the restoration to come, all that will change.
As he put it in formal remarks: “Being an architect is a profession based on hope. We see things that aren’t there yet, as is the case with progressive politicians like Martin Looney.”
Looney said he had often used the library himself as a refuge during lunch when he was a staffer in the Frank Logue administration, and also when he was starting out in his law practice.
In a kind of spiritual phrase you don’t often hear from public figures, Looney added that as the library nears its 200th anniversary (in 2026), it is well worth remembering how it “brings grace into the lives of everyone who comes here.”
He’s not the only prominent New Haven politico to seek out the Institute when in need of a restorative respite from public life. Press scuttlebutt had it that former Mayor John DeStefano used to go to the Institute Library to have a breather from the frenzy of meetings and demands on his time. He said he could always count on only a few people being at the storied but under-patronized gem on Chapel Street.
Dewey Decimal? Don't Know Him
Frank Cochran demonstrates the mysteries of the card catalog system
For years before and during the pandemic the library has relied on a cadre of super volunteers to organize bucket brigades in crises when, for example, the skylights blew open in a storm and to jerry-rig emergency repairs.
One of those volunteers, Ann Marlowe, standing by one of the culprit radiators, recalled, “Just two weeks after we heard (about the $1.725 million grant), three radiators blew valves and we had a lake here. It was as if the whole heating system thought, ‘Aha! You’re going to replace me,’ I’ll show you.’”
What is not going to be replaced, however, is the beloved hand-written card catalog system, curated by another super-volunteer, Frank Cochran.
He showed a reporter how he had meticulously this very day entered into the 40,000 volume collection using the library’s unique and very non-Dewey Decimal system Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul’s The Loss of Eldorado.
Its call number, written on a three-by-five card (remember those?) in bright red ink, is Z823. “Z” is for the history section; “8” indicates the book is about general 20th century history. And “23,” explained Cochran, means it’s the 23rd book in that section. Or something like that.
Cochran, now in his 12th year of volunteering, also hosts and curates live jazz performances every Friday at 5:30 p.m. at the library.
Why a colonial history of Trinidad and Venezuela published in 1969 was just now being entered into the fine oak card catalogue cabinets is one of those questions that is part of the mystery and charm of the library, a place where the past and present happily coexist. (Is that what Looney meant by “grace?”)
And Library patrons who want that quality preserved every bit as much as they are exulting over the coming new elevator and insulated roof should have no fears. It is only the turn-of-the-century physical infrastructure that is going to be replaced.
“We have a turn-of-the-century card catalog system. We have no plans for an electronic system,” said Swiatek. “It is (and will continue to be) lovingly curated by hand.”
Social Justice Readers
Maryann Ott with new board member Tristan Ward in the new area of the library set aside for the Social Justice Reader program
But new cultural and education programs are coming and in fact are already in place. Tristan Ward, a New Haven Academy high school student, was one of the first cohort in the Library’s Social Justice Reader program. These are paid fellowships for 10 local students a year– selected students receive $2,500 each – to study and to create projects at the library utilizing the setting and its resources as inspiration.
Ward said he was struck by how many of his classmates — and kids of color in particular — had their education set back during the pandemic. He wanted to make a contribution to help reverse the inequities. Result: During his six months’ fellowship he researched and created what he described as the College BIPOC Student Alliance. It’s a site, soon to debut on social media, that will make grants and college opportunities increasingly available to minority students.
After his presentation, Ward was asked to be the newest member of the Institute Library’s board.
Swiatek said that Ward had to do the lion’s share of his work away from the Library as it was closed during the two years of the pandemic – or had spaces compromised by damage that could not be used.
As she put it to Looney: “The idea of not running around the fourth floor with a tarp is intoxicating.”
That will change now with the cohorts to come into the new/old space that is about to be created not only comfortable and welcoming, but physically secure for generations to come.
Also on hand Wednesday was Natalie Elicker, who served as executive director of the Library from 2014 to 2016. She helped write a grant for the library to the State Historic Preservation Office, which was the beginning of the process, said Joe Banks, that has led to the $1.725 million bonding.
Under Elicker’s leadership and that of her predecessors like Will Baker, the library woke itself up from its somnolence and has created a unique blend of programs like live short story readings, poetry, magic, and you name it – literature, music, the performing arts.
Click here for more details about the library’s illustrious history, the coming restoration, the Social Justice Reader Program participants, and other programs.
What a complete waste of state money. A tiny, under-utilized library that has worked like a private club for the genteel and snobby white, well connected privileged people. In 200 years, they never reached out to the community in general, let alone to people of color. I bet you that 99% of people in New Haven have never even heard of it. I wonder how many teachers and tutors could have been hired for the New Haven schools with this money.