LITHOPOLIS – It’s a busy time at the Wagners Memorial Library. Not only is the staff preparing for the library’s Christmas Open House on Dec. 9, but the library recently received a plaque designating it on the National Register of Historic Places.
Plans are also underway for the library’s 100th anniversary in 2025.
The U.S. Department of the Interior added the library to the National Register of Historic Places in December after an approximately 18-month process.
“Part of that process is completing a historic building report,” said Library Executive Director Deb Sylvia. “We hired Perspectus, an architectural firm in Cleveland. It’s an expensive process, and he received two grants to help with that process.”
One of the grants came from the Jeffris Family Foundation in Milwaukee, and the other came from American Recovery Act funds through the village.
The original part of the library was built in 1925, and the annex was built in 1961.
Sylvia said the National Register designation will raise the library’s profile and help it obtain various grants for needed restoration work. This work will include restoring some of the exterior woodwork that has fallen into some disrepair. The building also requires exterior masonry work.
“After nearly 100 years of weathering, this piece needs love and care,” Sylvia says. “And we’re going to update some infrastructure that’s not very pretty but is necessary.”
In preparation for the upcoming 100th anniversary, library staff, board members, and community members are beginning to plan celebrations. Official celebrations are scheduled to begin on Memorial Day next year and culminate in a grand finale on Memorial Day 2025. The library was dedicated to him on Memorial Day 1925.
The library’s founders initially established it as a library with an auditorium, a community center, and a cultural arts museum.
“We’ve been doing it for almost 100 years,” Sylvia said. “We have been privately funded for a long time, until about 2004, when we started receiving public library funds through the state of Ohio. But we are an independent public library receiving those funds. .”
Wagnalls also has gallery space, a pipe organ, community theater programs, and performing arts programs.
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