SOUTH DEERFIELD — After opening its first floor in January, Tilton Library is set to open its second floor in early July, allowing residents to roam and view the results of an expansion project that first started to take shape two decades ago.
“I think that someone will have to pinch me when it finally happens,” Library Director Candace Bradbury-Carlin said.
The call for a bigger space began with a five-year plan in 2006, before the library’s board of trustees began hunting for grants in 2011. In 2022, voters approved appropriating $12.3 million for the project and D.A. Sullivan & Sons Inc. kicked off construction in April 2024. Now, 20 years after the idea first arose, the addition has nearly tripled the library’s footprint from 4,366 to 12,784 square feet.
The first floor includes a new Community Room for workshops, lectures and events, and a Children’s Room with a Sensory Room, computers, a play space and shelves full of books for beginner readers. In the Children’s Room, Bradbury-Carlin said visitors have not only stopped by to pick their next bedtime read, but lingered in the space.
“They’re just so happy there. There’s so much to do,” Bradbury-Carlin said. “You know it’s good when people go and they don’t want to leave.”
The installation of the elevator connecting the two floors held up the opening of the entire space. Now, with installation underway, visitors may have a chance to find a cozy corner upstairs as early as July.
On the second floor, the original building is broken into a craft space and a room featuring local history. A few steps up takes visitors to two quiet study rooms and a new Teen Room — a driving force behind the expansion, according to Bradbury-Carlin — with reading or socializing nooks, tables for arts and crafts, and a gaming area. To tailor the new space to meet local teens’ needs, an advisory board of about five Frontier Regional School high schoolers and 10 middle schoolers met to brainstorm ideas.
“I think people are getting excited with all the potential,” Bradbury-Carlin said. “Deerfield center is going through its own metamorphosis in the bigger picture, and I think the library has started that metamorphosis.”
As the momentum for the expansion project builds, Bradbury-Carlin said the library has “[hit] a stride,” with donations and pledges adding up to $1.65 million.
“I think our community needs and really wants places to gather, places to learn things, more resources to have access to, and we’ve been building on that for a number of years, but now the gates are going to be fully open,” Bradbury-Carlin said. “As we get closer, people are really excited to support the project, because before you had to envision it, and now you can see it.”
To help the renovations cross the finish line, volunteer Dennis O’Rourke has been collecting shoes across town as part of a fundraiser to benefit the library.
O’Rourke has collected more than 1,500 gently used shoes at the library, Greenfield Savings Bank in South Deerfield, Frontier Regional School, Deerfield Elementary School, Deerfield Academy, The Bement School, Eaglebrook School and Pelican Products Inc., along with Stoneleigh-Burnham School and Northfield Mount Hermon School.
After O’Rourke and other volunteers finish collecting shoes on June 29, a Funds2Orgs driver will pick them up before the organization sends them to entrepreneurs in more than 20 countries in Africa and Asia, who will resell the footwear. Then, the organization will send a check for the library expansion project based on the total weight of the shoes.
“Their local, very small economy is going to be getting assistance from people like you and I in western Massachusetts,” O’Rourke said. “It’s a win-win situation.”
O’Rourke collects the shoes sporting a bright red Converse sneaker costume, embodying the cause and getting laughs and quippy comments like, “You’ve really got sole.”
“My enthusiasm I think has been contagious,” O’Rourke said. “It’s silly, but it’s a fun silly, and it’s all for the library.”
