More Dust

What you see here is the last remaining 1/6th or so of what was for many years the West Palm Beach Public Library. A new complex housing City Hall, assorted offices, and the new library stands a bit to the west on Clematis Street downtown. I haven't been inside the new structure but am assured by many, including a friend who works there part time, that it is a vast improvement in functionality. Of that, I have no doubt.

But, practicality is never my top concern when it comes to appreciation of architecture (thank heavens I'm not an architect). Nostalgia is also a powerful thing. I have miles of memories of the old library, far too many to attempt to laundry list here. My father took me there many, many times in the 70s and early 80s. Many grammar school book reports were at least done in part at those big oval tables near the reference section. I think back fondly on the "basement", the downstairs area designed for the little ones. I remember sitting on the floor while a librarian or volunteer read stories of Beatrix Potter or such. Interestingly, I descended those stairs one final time just a few months ago. Things looked similiar, with a few indications of progress, but it still generally looked and smelled the way it did 30 years before.

I would go on to use that library to study for tests in high school, undergrad, and grad school. I sat on lazy days with an out-of-town newspaper and gazed through the giant east windows out over the Lake and Palm Beach beyond it. I rented VHS tapes and DVDs. I had a bicycle stolen from out front. I sat outside and fed the pigeons, who sometimes flew to their deaths into the structure's aforementioned huge windows. I sometimes avoided and other times conversed with the battalions of homeless folks who parked their shopping carts nearby. I shared ice cream and spoke in foreign accents with my eventual wife-to-be by the fountain.

But now that space where the library stood is flattened dirt, just as it was before the building was erected. I moan that another of the local landmarks has been pulverized to make way for something new (3 of my old public schools suffered this fate earlier in the decade), but I think back to what the reactions must have been when these places were originally built. Doubtless, someone complained that the developers were raping the earth to erect another structure to serve the masses. I can appreciate that point of view ("This was a Pizza Hut, now it's all covered with daisies....."), but as I get older, as I see the wheels of progress, of change, I get a little sadder as each brick falls. Each brick, a little piece of me.....