The Old Arlington Hills Public Library: My Favorite Reading Place

Today is International Literacy Day, and I can't help but be thankful for my childhood. I was surrounded with writers and books and readers, and many fond hours were spent curled up on a window seat in the old Arlington Hills Public Library.

Arlington Hills Public Library, 1916-2014

The library, one of three Carnegie libraries in St. Paul, lives on in the National Register of Historic Places, though the library itself has relocated. Once a part of the St. Paul Public Library system, it is now part of the Arlington Hills Community Center on Payne Avenue.

But in my youth, it was a fascinating place, filled with shelves of books of every genre. This was were I learned the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog. Oh, we had a small library at Farnsworth Elementary, but this one had everything a reading mind could hope for. Plus it was within bike-riding distance from my house and my mom did not object to my going there alone (or with a friend or sibling).

Arlington Hills had several other things going for it that drew me to this stately building for much of my childhood, including well into high school. It was my first stop for books for school assignments and research papers as well as reading for pure enjoyment. And I went there year round, because in the summer the high ceilings and massive masonry construction made it very cool inside. Even cooler was the basement, the location of the rest rooms and a community room where programs were often presented.

They also had a summer reading program, as did (I assume) most children's public library sections did. You could sign up at the beginning of the summer, and every time you finished reading a book, another entry was added to your list. Certain milestones earned you gifts, like a bookmark, book bag, and even free books. I usually bypassed most of my competition the first week. One year I recall the program was a bookworm theme, and you started out with the worm's head with your name on it. Each book earned you another circle to add as a body section. It didn't take me long before my bookworm curled up in a pile on the floor below the bulletin board.

When I returned to the East Side of St. Paul in 1989 with my husband and young daughter, I renewed my love affair with the Arlington Hills Library, and each of my children got exposed to its treasures. The young ones came for read-out-loud story time and programs on reptiles. And my eldest joined the summer reading program. Like her mom, she learned to read well before kindergarten and books delighted her.

But there were other reasons I fell in love with reading as a small child. My dad always had a book in progress, and several of my aunts and uncles (who were teachers) believed that the best birthday and Christmas gifts were books. I spent hours curled up in the lap of my elderly great-grandfather as he 'read' to me from poetry books. (Years later I realized that being blind, he wasn't reading to me at all, just reciting Whittier and Longfellow from memory as he held the book in his hands.) My grandma's entryway was constructed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and I was allowed free access from the time I could crawl over and grab a book from the lowest shelves. Grandma's only requirement was that I had to give her an oral book report before I could 'check out' another.

Years later I loved exploring the St. Paul Public library downtown, and I spent many long hours in the James J. Hill Reference Library or in the library at the Minnesota Historical Society as I worked on research papers for my AP history class with June Dahl at Johnson High. (I could tell you more about the injustice of the conviction and murder of Sacco and Vanzetti than you would care to know, but that's a whole other topic.) And eventually as I went off to college at the University of Minnesota, I learned to find my way around the back stacks for volumes not out in public.

Still, when I think of how thankful I am that literacy was extremely important in my family, it is the old Arlington Hills library that flashes into my memory. I am sad to think that children can no longer find refuge there in the summer, but I'm glad the building has been preserved. I wonder how many parents like me still drive by and tell their kids or grand kids stories about checking out books there. Google Maps tells me its 1,747 miles from there to my current home, but in my heart it's just a few blocks by bike from Lane Place and Jessamine. I think I'm going to go curl up on the couch with one of my favorite books from Grandma Ray's bookshelves and pretend I'm a kid again.

Happy International Literary Day!