If you haven’t been inside the Boonslick Regional Library’s Boonville branch since early summer, you’re in for a surprise. The library reopened Aug. 3 at 707 Third Street, on the historic Kemper Campus — more than double the size of the cramped storefront it called home for 65 years at 618 Main Street, according to KOMU.
The new home is a three-story redbrick building dating to 1906, and the $1.46 million structural renovation that made it fit for books came entirely from private community donations, KOMU reports. Getting there took real logistics: Tiger Moving Company of Columbia hauled more than 43,000 books and materials from Main Street to Third Street, with library staff working alongside the movers to keep the catalog in order — no small feat when you’re also reassembling decades-old shelving units for the upper level.
“We’ve gone from a building that is less than half the size to a wonderful space here,” Mary Pat Abele, chair of the Cooper County Building and Expansion Committee, told KOMU.
The new building has room the old one never did: a Discovery Center, a Research and Genealogy area, a Writers’ Nook, and dedicated children’s and young-adult sections, according to the Boonslick Regional Library‘s own account of the move.
Much of what’s actually sitting in those rooms came from neighbors, not a furniture budget. The library invited the community to “adopt” individual pieces, and residents did: upholstered armchairs and lounge seating for the upper-level lounge, computer desks for the research area, benches at the entrances, and a five-section seating arrangement in the Discovery Center, built so parents can keep an eye on kids at play while they browse, the library says.
The work isn’t finished. As of this month, the library is still raising money for interior and exterior signage, landscaping, a memorial tree display, and fire-escape restoration ahead of a grand-opening celebration planned for later this fall. Anyone interested in adopting a piece of furniture, or pitching in another way, can reach Mary Pat Abele at 660-888-1611.
The branch itself, meanwhile, is already open on Third Street, full of new corners to discover — the payoff of a Cooper County community that decided its library was worth the trouble.
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