By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
Last week we told of the founding of the Friends of the Pekin Public Library in 1973 and how the Friends rescued the library’s “Grandfather” and “Grandmother” clocks when the furnishings of the Carnegie library were auctioned off 31 Aug. 1974.
Before that auction could be held, however, the library’s collection of 45,000 books and other materials had to be moved from the Carnegie library to the shelves of the new facility.
To accomplish that task, the library received the help of 270 Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Brownies, and Girl Scouts in around the area. The Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts belonged to the Tomahawk District, while the Brownies and Girl Scouts were from the Kickapoo Council.
The Scouts arrived on Friday morning, Aug. 23, 1974, and, supervised by their adult members and the older Scouts, lined up to form a “bucket brigade” to transfer the books out the windows of the Carnegie library and into the adjacent new library. The new library had been built so that the western and southern walls of the Carnegie library were just a few feet from the walls and northeast entrance of the new building.
Before long it was determined that the bucket brigade method was too slow and was inefficient, so the Scouts switched to walking the books out of the old library and into the new one, carrying as many at a time as they could. Library staff members would remove the books from the old shelves and stack them for the Scouts to pick up, and other staff members would place them on the new shelves as the Scouts brought them in.
A Pekin Times report at the time said, “Workers were organized in shifts, alternately working and resting. Energy and enthusiasm of the young people didn’t flag thruout the long day, and one librarian commented, ‘It’s the greatest feeling in the world to look out that office window and see all those kids and all that enthusiasm.’”
The Carnegie library was emptied of books in a matter of days, in time for the auction which was held in the rooms of the old library. Shelving of the last of the 45,000 materials in the new library, which was accomplished with the volunteer help of U.S. Army Reservists, was completed by Sept. 5, 1974.
The next step after the auction was to complete preparations for the demolition of the Carnegie library. The task of demolition was assigned to Helmig Excavation of Pekin, and Helmig’s wrecking ball and bulldozers began their work on Sept. 19, 1974. The razing of the 1902 structure was completed over the next few days.
Per the Hackler designs, the former site of the Carnegie library at the corner of Broadway and S. Fourth became a brick-paved sunken plaza. As were the bricks of the exterior and interior of the new library, the plaza bricks were a dark brown.
In the plaza was installed one of the two ornate lamps from the Carnegie library entrance. The other entrance lamp had been auctioned off and now adorns the property of a Pekin family. The plaza lamp was wired to illuminate the plaza in the evening.
While work was completed in transferring library operations to the new building, meanwhile the papers of Senator Dirksen also were organized with the help of the Library of Congress and were moved into the Dirksen Congressional Research Center located in the northwest area of the new facility.
A large bust of Sen. Everett M. Dirksen was commissioned for the Dirksen Center, with money for the bust appropriated by the Illinois General Assembly. The $125,000 sculpture was the work of portrait sculptor Carl Tolpo (1901-1976). Work on the bust was delayed by the General Assembly’s failure to pay the sculptor for his work in a timely fashion. When finished, the bust was brought to Pekin in 1976 and installed in the sunken plaza in 1977.
With the old library gone and the new plaza finished, the library and Dirksen Center opened to the public in the fall of 1974.
Next week we will recall the visit of President Gerald R. Ford to Pekin to dedicate the new library and Dirksen Center.
