From hand to hand a copy of August Wilson's last play made its way along Centre Avenue, from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's old location in the Hill District to its new one two blocks away.

Library manager Joyce Broadus thought the passing of "Radio Golf" from mother to son, neighbor to neighbor a fitting way to ceremonially open the community's newest building yesterday.

It is, after all, just around the corner from where one of Mr. Wilson's old haunts, Eddie's Restaurant, sat, and the library is committed to keeping his memory alive on the Hill. The nine other plays in Mr. Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle -- along with the library's 22,000 books -- made the journey a few weeks ago, when the branch closed for its big move.

Since its informal opening on Oct. 7, "We've had over 100 new library card applications," Ms. Broadus said. "People are excited that we're open and we didn't leave. We kept our promise."

A new library in the Hill has been several years in the planning, and worth the wait. The Downtown architectural firm Pfaffmann + Associates designed a one-story contemporary building that, because of a few deft moves with scale, massing and materials, feels at home among the taller, historic commercial buildings at the once-bustling intersection of Centre Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street.

But it also stands out, taking advantage of its irregularly shaped site -- a rectangle with one jutting triangular corner -- by filling that corner with a triangular, glass-walled room.

"It's a very unusual shape to build a building on. We sort of knew right away that [the corner] was going to be a special place for this lantern-like room," said Robert Pfaffmann, who closes his e-mails with a quote from Mr. Wilson: "My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history."

The odd site -- it also slopes -- and the Hill's history were among the primary influences that shaped the building, the architect said. But how do you bring history back to a site that's a clean slate, most recently home to a gas station that closed about a decade ago?

Mr. Pfaffmann and his team have chosen to do it with a 10-foot-by-7-foot map of the Hill, which occupies the lantern room's one masonry wall. It's an assemblage and enlargement of G.M. Hopkins Co. real estate maps of 1923, a testament to the Hill's density and ethnic diversity 85 years ago.

By the 1950s, when Mr. Wilson was growing up in the Hill, 1,300 of those buildings were coming down for a failed urban renewal scheme, and hundreds more have fallen since through neglect and abandonment. The map shows the Hill made whole again. White numbers in black circles on the map indicate locations relating to Mr. Wilson's plays and life, as known or conjectured by Post-Gazette theater critic Christopher Rawson. The legend identifying their significance is printed on paper maps free for the taking. Visitors also can record their own Hill memories in a log book on a zebra-wood shelf under the map.

Outfitted with comfortable lounge chairs and tables also laminated with brown-and-black-striped zebra wood, this is the library's reading room, not far from the magazine racks. Patrons also bring their laptops and take advantage of the library's wireless access, Ms. Broadus said. Although it's a corner room, it feels like the library's heart and soul.

Inside and out, the architecture has a spare elegance. The red brick exterior at either end harmonizes with nearby buildings, but the glass front that stretches along Centre Avenue suggests a new direction and fills the building with natural light. The architects control it with exterior wood screens, interior sunshades and a roof overhang.

Interior lights, including cylindrical and saucer-shaped pendants, are on sensors and turn on automatically when needed. Other green features include carpet tiles, a raised floor and PaperStone countertops, made from recycled cellulose paper and a natural resin.

Locating a community room, workroom, kitchen, staff offices and bathrooms along the long rear side of the 8,334-square-foot building left most of the interior open, with a large, flexible space for everyday public use. In the children's area, the stacks are treated like trellises, with clear plastic panels overhead that catch the natural light and provide a sense of partial enclosure under the building's high ceiling. The interior palette is a cool, low-key one in the gray-green-blue range.

Built with a $3.15 million budget by A. Martini and Co., the Hill branch library is the eighth project funded by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Libraries for LIFE Capital Campaign and the institution's first library built from the ground up since the Sheraden branch opened in 1980. The library's strategy has been to put libraries on main streets so that they can take advantage of street traffic and spur economic development.

Library patron and Hill resident Anita Davis, who remembers when the corner of Centre and Kirkpatrick held clothing, shoe and drug stores, hopes that will be the case here.

Ms. Davis, who used to work at Eddie's Restaurant, delights in the irony of a library around the corner from it. Because Eddie, jokingly, used to say to Mr. Wilson, as he sat quietly drinking his coffee, reading and writing, "This ain't no library. Get on out of here, man."

Mr. Wilson, at last, has his library.