Around Town

New Canaan Library To Launch ‘Changemakers’ Installation at 1913 Building

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As New Canaan Library prepares to take on the final phase of its remade campus—identifying a function for the 1913 building—it is also using the historic structure for a new art installation. 

And it’s partnering with one of the town’s most important local nonprofit organizations to do it: The New Canaan Museum & Historical Society. 

NCM&HS this month is launching the new Jim and Dede Bartlett Center for New Canaan History. It’s built around a theme of “Making a Difference”—the people, businesses, and events that have shaped  the community. As part of the permanent exhibition, the Museum has an interactive console of 50 New Canaan residents who had a significant impact on the town. Officials from the library looked at the images and biographies and selected six to feature in the windows of the legacy building. “The New Canaan Museum was happy to be the library’s partner in celebrating the lives of transformative New Canaan residents,” said Nancy Geary, executive director of NCM&HS.

Around Town

‘We’re Really Excited’: New Canaan Library Opens ‘Green’ to the Public

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New Canaan Library’s widely anticipated green is now open to the public, officials say. Patrons of New Canaan Library can now approach and enter the new building from the corner of Main and Cherry Streets, and the green itself connects the campus to the downtown in a new way, said Vice President of Operations Cheryl Capitani. “We’re really excited about the green being open,” Capitani told NewCanaanite.com. “It’s a step that really, for a lot of us, makes us feel part of downtown in a way that we haven’t felt before. So that connection is exciting for us.

Around Town

‘It’s Been Overwhelming’: New Library Sees Huge Demand for Meeting Rooms

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The celebrated new New Canaan Library is seeing high use and traffic from residents of all ages, availing themselves of features such as quiet work spaces, programming, café, reading areas, rooftop terrace, business center, MakerLab, garden, community events and computer stations. With the creation of the green overlooking Main and Cherry Streets, a range of outdoor areas will soon join that list. Yet one of the most-used features of the new library has been its plentiful—and always booked-out—meeting rooms.

“It’s been overwhelming,” CEO Capital Campaign Major Gifts & Endowment Ellen Crovatto told NewCanaanite.com Monday morning on the library’s main floor, as patrons moved through the nearby stacks. “The response has been great and people are using the rooms at a very, very high rate.”

The library has had 7,000 room bookings in the new building since it opened in February. The meeting rooms—five smaller (four to eight people) in a row on the second floor, with a series of larger conference rooms nearby—are “in demand constantly,” Crovatto said.

Around Town

New  ’Green’ at the Library About 8 Weeks from Completion

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The widely anticipated “green” taking shape at Main and Cherry Streets is about eight weeks from completion, according to New Canaan Library Executive Director Lisa Oldham. The hardscaping of the green has been underway since the library-owned 1913 building shifted 115 feet to its new location at the western edge of the library’s privately owned property, and new footpaths along Cherry Street have been poured. “You’ll notice they’re double width, so there’s one width of footpath similar in size to what was there before, from the street inwards, and then another as deep again as that, which is where the benches will go,” Oldham told NewCanaanite.com. 

“And then seven tons of stone has been delivered for all the stone work that’s going to be done in the next month. Planting is supposed to start this week, if the weather cooperates, and they’ll be starting on the Main Street frontage. There’s a lot of shrubbery and other types of plantings that have to go in.

Allison Rees

Local Couple Gifts $3 Million to New Canaan Library; Children’s Room Renamed

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New Canaan Library announced Monday that a local couple has donated $3 million toward the organization’s capital campaign. The library’s Children’s Room has been renamed The Rees Family Children’s Library after Michael and Allison Rees, according to a press release. Lisa Oldham, executive director of the library, said in a statement, “Michael and Allison’s generosity accompanies an exemplary fidelity to culture and civic life in New Canaan and reflects their sincere desire to make a difference. The Rees Family Children’s Library will forever reflect their exceptional vision.”

The new 42,000-square-foot library opened four months ago, about three years after officials unveiled a dramatic new plan for the organization’s block at the edge of downtown New Canaan. Awash in natural light and featuring the new Jim and Dede Bartlett Auditorium, multiple meeting rooms, an instantly popular café, heavily used teen area and spacious children’s room, the facility replaced an aging facility with a failing, costly physical plant that hadn’t seen a significant renovation in four decades.