Sunday, November 09, 2003

A dozen or so history lovers, neighborhood activists and fans of great architecture came to keep a century-old Carnegie Library open.

Sorry. Maybe next time.

A man in a nice suit representing the library stood in the grand City Council chambers to tell, not ask, City Council one thing: The library in Hazelwood, a working-class neighborhood that hugs the north shore of the Monongahela, will move in a few months.

It will leave the city-owned building with the stained-glass dome, where it has been since 1900. It will reopen 3 1/2 blocks away, above a year-old coin laundry and a six-pack shop. Thus does your city slouch into the 21st century.

What can I tell you that you don't already know? The city doesn't have the money to make the grand old place accessible to the handicapped. The new place will be on Second Avenue, the neighborhood's main street, and so will be more visible, closer to a Head Start center and a senior citizens high-rise, and will have more buses passing by.

We're trading beauty for convenience, which is the American way. The present building on Monongahela Street has a 250-seat theater that's rarely used and a large upstairs apartment for a caretaker who no longer exists. Staff members Kathy Khouze and Theresa Nagy, after allowing me a quick tour of the empty spaces, told me it's the right move.

The branches of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh that generate the most traffic are not necessarily the grandest. Modest structures in Woods Run, Squirrel Hill, East Liberty, Knoxville and Beechview, all built between 1964 and 1972, may not stir the soul, but they're on main drags. They draw readers. Knoxville gets about three times as many patrons as Hazelwood.

If this were a restaurant move, it would be like going from The Grand Concourse to McDonald's. Library leadership has given up wishing we were still a people who enjoyed weekend band concerts with the neighbors.

I've often thought the only thing the current generation of Pittsburghers has to do if we want a great city is to find ways to save the best of what's been left us. But we no longer have even enough people to do that.

Hazelwood is trying to right itself after four decades of decline. It retains a high percentage of home owners, but it has lost almost 60 percent of its population since 1960. This new bit of "not there anymore" will be just down the hill from the shuttered Gladstone Middle School, closed two years ago, and a book's throw from St. Ann Church, closed six years ago and now a warehouse for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

The executive board of The Hazelwood Initiative hopes the Carnegie's estimates of doubling library patronage means more business on Second Avenue. But Alexander Jozsa Bodnar, who owns a Hungarian restaurant just down the street and leads a rival neighborhood group, doesn't buy that. At the counter of Jozsa Corner, Bodnar offered me a delicious langos, a quick-fried dough and powdered sugar combo. And he complained about the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which helped to finance the new building, playing favorites as the library betrays Andrew Carnegie's legacy.

Don't expect a new use for the old gem anytime soon. If prayers to St. Ann went unanswered, what chance does a side-street library have? A consortium of foundations is busy enough trying to find a use for a 168-acre site just down the hill, where the LTV Coke works belched smoke until 1998.

As I pulled up to the library during a heavy rain Wednesday morning, I found Joe Aiken reading a big book on a covered porch across the street. He smiled and said he has essentially lived in that library since he moved here from Texas a few months ago, after the death of his wife.

Aiken would prefer the library stayed put, but said, "If anybody wants to get to a library, it doesn't matter where it is. They're going to get to the library."

This will be the third of eight branch libraries, built for the city between 1898 and 1910, to close its doors since the 1960s. The one in East Liberty was demolished. The old Hill District branch is a mosque, Masjid Al-Awwal. If you value the old Carnegie Library nearest you, you'd better check out some books. These places are fragile. Stay away for a decade or so and they're gone.

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