Woodside Library Reopens After 12-Week Renovations

(L. to r.): City Councilmember Eric Gioia, Queens Library Director Thomas Galante, Assemblymember Margaret Markey and Community Board 2 Chairman Joseph Conley cut the ribbon to open the Woodside branch of the Queens Borough Public Library after the building underwent extensive renovations during the past summer. Politicians, schoolchildren and local citizens gathered September 22 at the Woodside branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, which reopened 12 weeks after it was shut down for renovation. The ceremony was really just a pleasant formality, because the Woodside branch has been back in business since August 8. But the gray-green corduroy squares of new carpeting and the white walls, part of the renovation design of architect Peter Magnani, looked opening-day fresh for both spectators and those taking part in the celebration.

The event began with the usual cutting of a ribbon, this one of red plastic, outside the entrance to the library. Chopping it in four places with gigantic gold scissors were Queens Borough Public Library Director Thomas Galante, Assemblymember Margaret Markey, City Councilmember Eric Gioia and Community Board 2 Chairman Joseph Conley. Inside the building, Galante hailed the library's technological advances (new computers, for instance) and Markey, who secured $80,000 in funding for the library repair project. He said Woodside was lucky to have Markey and Gioia as political representatives.

Markey compared the Woodside branch to the one she remembered, without nostalgia, from her childhood in Queens. It was, she said, "dark and dingy, with the children's library in the back". Literally and figuratively, services for children are out front now, as are such programs as English as a second language (ESL). The Queens Borough Public Library is often described as the largest circulating library in the country, but Markey expanded on that by saying that a few years ago it was second in the world only to the library system in Bonn, Germany. She wondered how the two stood at present. She said the library system "has evolved to something special" and that it represents "your tax dollars, well spent".

Gioia, like the children in attendance at the reopening, went to school at P.S. 11, across Skillman Avenue from the library. He called the library system "part of the educational system". As a child, he said, he would cross the street "every single day" to read in the library. "Across the street from every school, there should be a library," he declared. Talking to the kids, he said that he eventually worked in the White House in Washington, as an aide to Vice President Al Gore and at that time came to the conclusion that his schooling, which began in Queens, left him as well prepared for life and work as any of the other young political aides around him, many of whom had gone to some of the most prestigious schools in America. Conley also spoke to the young students, telling them that the library was "a key to unlocking knowledge".

Having overseen the Woodside reopening, Queens Borough Public Library's Jimmy Van Bramer had to rush off to Grand Avenue, where a reopening ceremony for the Maspeth branch of the library was to take place within the hour. Renovations are due to be carried out at several other branches, including the one on Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside, probably in early 2007.