The Palmerston Library
In the early 1900s, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie made significant donations towards building public libraries around the world. Canada received $2,556,600 for public library construction. Of the 125 Carnegie libraries built in Canada with this investment, 111 were located in Ontario. Wellington County Library is fortunate to have five Carnegie library branches within the system. The Palmerston Library received one of the earliest Carnegie grants in Ontario. The library was completed in 1903 with a gift of $10,000. In addition to the main floor library, an auditorium was included on the upper level. The original building was 7000+ square feet. The Palmerston Branch will be the final Carnegie building to be renovated. Over the past decade, the County of Wellington has refurbished and expanded four of the Carnegie libraries (Harriston, Mount Forest, Elora and Fergus) and now continues this work in 2015 with the Palmerston branch. Ken Waller of North Bay, Ontario comments: "I grew up in Palmerston, born & raised there, graduated from Norwell in 1980. So I vividly recall spending time in the Palmerston Library, on each of the three levels. Cubs & Scouts meetings were held in the basement (somewhat dark & dingy back in the '70s), signing books out on the main floor (Mrs. Cameron was the wonderful Librarian for many years) and also attended some school play productions in the third floor theatre. I was always impressed with the theatre with the Promecium Stage and the wonderful drama murals that flanked the stage. The sloping floor was also unique for an old building in a small town." |
One interesting design feature is that the floor slopes gently upwards towards the back of the auditorium. With the seats installed this allowed everyone to have a good view of the stage.
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This is what the auditorium looked like when I visited Palmerston in May, 2015. The auditorium took up the whole upper level of the library. The stage was at the east end of the building.
The detail (above) of the image on the left shows that at some point the stage was extended outwards. Instead of reconstructing the stage to accommodate this change it was just added onto the original front. With the renovation of the building one can see the first iteration of the stage.
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From Jim's Notes
Due to the nature of the tongue and groove flooring, it didn't laminate up quite as I would have liked. This created a few interesting moments on the lathe. However, I was successful in bringing the piece to a satisfactory conclusion. I called the piece "Legacy" as the contribution of Andrew Carnegie lives on more than 100 years after his inspired philanthropy.
This piece has been sold. |
If you are interested in some of the the thoughts I had regarding how I was going to use this wood, there are some additional videos here.
The flooring was maple and in pretty rough condition. In the video on the left, my apprentice, Lesley Kelly is removing most of the nails. The ones we didn't find at this stage were found later under less desired conditions. |