See an article by Miss Annie B. Jackson,[53] on items and expense of alterations at North Adams, Mass. The repairs there proved to outrun the estimate.
When you get your tentative plans and your rough estimates, get also a rough estimate for a new building. You will often be surprised to find how near the cost of alterations will come to that of building. If it turns out so, better wait and get your ideal rather than patch up a makeshift.
But if, after deliberation, you vote to alter, there is one wise end to aim at, that is, to spend as small a part of your available funds for mere alteration, and as large a part for features which could be utilized later for a permanent building, as may be possible. Witness, for instance, the recent experience of the Salem Public Library.[54] They had pressing need of more room, but could use only $70,000 for changes, not enough for such a new building as they wanted, or could afford while they had a perfectly sound old residence to use. But by ingenious planning, they have been able to get a stack with an administration head house, to which they can add later a main building when they need further enlargement. They have spent a minimum in temporary changes on their old dwelling-house, and have besides retained enough money to build a branch library.
Altering New Buildings. It is not only old buildings that need altering. Too frequently a good librarian, alive to progress, and faced with the problems of growth, finds himself promoted to a beautiful building of such recent erection as to be financially exhausted, and indisposed to spend money in necessary additions or alterations. The question confronts him, how get more room with the least cost?
In this fix, he will first look inside and see where he can house more books, more readers, more attendants. Here shortcomings of the architect may perhaps afford him at least temporary relief. The most likely fault he finds will be wasted space, perpendicularly or laterally. Two faults are bad; they cannot even be converted into virtues. These are domes and ornamental staircases. Domes, to be sure, can be circled with galleries to which unused books can be sent—a very brief palliative. And elevators or lifts may be cut into stairs. But such makeshifts will not serve.
More opportunities may be discovered in spacious vestibules, in wide corridors, in lofty stories. The vestibules and corridors can be narrowed to simply useful width, and their exuberance partitioned off into rooms. Mezzanine floors can also utilize waste upper spaces.
If money cannot be found for partitions and floors, for iron and wood and paint, I see a good use for sliding cases, in the form Professor Little has at Bowdoin—just two or more stories of this contrivance, set out in the corner or at the side or in the middle of any useless stretch of floor.
Tables and chairs can invite an overflow of readers in any space not needed for passage; temporary wooden shelving can be set against any corridor wall; administration desks can be protruded into any architectural waste. When you go to Washington, see what Mr. Bowerman has done at the Public Library there.