Totally agree. Austin, NYC, and Seattle all have brilliant new (or newish) downtown libraries. It’s a shame a city as tied to education as Raleigh doesn’t have a similar crown jewel.
Raleigh’s signature library is sitting on NC State’s Centennial Campus. It’s open to the public and there are a variety of affiliations that allow you access to the books, but it’s decidedly not downtown.
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Columbia, UT, and UW all have world-renowned libraries but there’s very good reasons the cities I mentioned all built great new public ones.
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If any of you have yet to visit Durham’s Main library (its opening was delayed over a year because of COVID), I highly, highly recommend it. They nailed it. It’s a stunning public space.
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Love to see it, do you have a link?
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Here are a few images. Photos don’t really do it justice though; it’s pretty spatially complex.
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Anyone remember when there were “plans” to build a new downtown library way back in the Livable Streets era of DTR? There was even a color sketch rendering. It was called Lichten Plaza…same name as the plaza in front of Memorial Auditorium. If I recall, the library was supposed to go where the Christian Science Reading Room stands.
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I would love to see a new library/Civic building/Social Center/etc. be built on either side of the Duke Center for the Performing Arts spot. It could mirror or mimic in some way, the old War Memorial building with the new glass facade. Just a morning thought 
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With the fairly recently expanded branch at The Village District, what is the likelihood that the city will invest in one in the city center?
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While timing is important, having the city keep at least one of those two properties open with the idea of a new version of a library in mind, that would be a good first step. And remember, it’s more about the New Version of a library and not simply “a library” and what it can collective be for DTR…
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Wake’s library system seems to be intentionally more decentralized than many, with more resources going into building and stocking the outlying “regional” libraries than many places that have dazzling central branches. It makes sense, I guess, because Wake is an enormous county - and what’s more, the approach seems to be successful: Wake has about 10% of the state’s population, but its libraries account for over 25% of all circulation of print materials in the state.
That said, the popularity of the county’s library system (and how crowded they can sometimes be!) does indicate there is demand for more. In recent years, they have been adding new libraries, and upgrading existing ones from “Community” to “Regional” - so while I would not expect them to build an Architectural Marvel™ of a new library downtown, it certainly would make sense for them to upgrade/replace the existing “express” library on Fayetteville Street with something bigger and better, as the population in the area around downtown continues to grow.
The county is certainly willing to work with municipalities as far as where to locate libraries and what they will look like (See: the new libraries in Cary and Morrisville) so a good opportunity I see would be as a ground-floor occupant of one of the buildings in Raleigh’s new municipal campus across Hargett from Nash Square.
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As someone completely unfaimilliar on this topic… Does this statistic include college and university libraries as well? Wake County is home to many academic institutions with extensive libraries separate from that of the County. I forget how many libraries that NCSU had on campus, and that is one of many institutions of higher education located within Wake County.
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It’s public library systems only. Statistics here:
https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/services-libraries/resources-library-staff/data-and-evaluation/north-carolina-public-library-statistics
The 25% statistic is actually from this past year; going back to before the pandemic, Wake was actually about 30% of total circulation in the state.
In comparison, Durham (for example) has about 3% of the state’s population and (for this same year) 4.5% of the state’s library circulation.
Charlotte/Mecklenburg: 10% of population, 10% of circulation - 1 : 1 ratio (I suppose this could be characterized as “average” performance for a library system)
Durham: 4.5% of circulation, 3% of population - 1.5 : 1 ratio (Honestly, this seems pretty successful to me)
Wake: 30% of circulation, 10% of population - 3 : 1 ratio (Whoa, this is pretty much knocking it out of the park)
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Why not have a central library be a tenant in Raleigh’s new municipal tower? Couldn’t the county and city work something out?
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Yes, definitely, I think that’s a great idea (I suggested it too a couple posts back).
I’d just temper your hopes for anything especially big or monumental. Something comparable to the other Regional libraries, in the range of 20-30k square feet, could be realistic. This would basically take up the entirity of a single floor of one of the municipal buildings planned here.
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If Wake County’s library system is as distributed and equitable as I am beginning to understand that it is, I don’t need the central library to be a vanity play. First and foremost, I would want any public service to work and serve its citizens. If that means typical branch sizing, then so be it.
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FWIW, Wake’s Regional libraries (If I’m counting right, there are eight of them throughout the county) range from about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of Durham’s new downtown library (which, evidently, is 65,000 square feet.) And I agree, we shouldn’t be concerned with one-upping Durham and building something bigger than them. Especially given how close the Village library is, another standard “Regional” library downtown would be plenty for the city to “grow into”, for years to come.
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The original structure before the renovation/expansion was 65k. It’s actually 96k sf now, which, yes… drives your point home even more.
We’re designing Carrboro’s flagship library at 50k sf, for another reference point, but many of the other libraries I’ve worked on in other states are in the 30k range or smaller. That’s a really nice size, and you’re still able to work in public amenities like maker spaces/VR/community rooms.
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Surely, modifying the future West Civic Tower to include a multi-floor library isn’t a tall ask for the City of Raleigh. I mean it’s not like the city is doing jack-shit to invest in downtown other than a renovated park in the past 10 years.
Even Charlotte can muster enough city pride to get a new library. We don’t even have an old one in the city center except for a very, very small one in the Municipal tower.
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