By STEPHANIE McFEETERS
@mcfeeters
Daily Hampshire Gazette
NORTHAMPTON — It’s not quite the Great Glass Elevator written about by Roald Dahl, but its steady dings sure are a welcome sound at Forbes Library. After nearly a year of construction, Forbes inaugurated a steampunk-style elevator last week, meaning the downtown Northampton library is once again handicapped accessible.
Due to its design, no part of the 19th-century building sits at ground level — making entry particularly difficult for patrons with wheelchairs, walkers or strollers.
“Everything is way down or way up, so it’s just kind of a nightmare,” library director Janet Moulding said of the layout. Forbes previously had two handicap lifts, she explained, but both proved unable to handle the library’s traffic and broke. The library also considered installing a ramp, but determined it would have been more expensive than an elevator, Moulding said.
Now, instead of climbing the flight of seven stone stairs in the Forbes front entry, patrons can ride in a steel and bronzed retro-looking elevator, designed to fit the building’s Victorian architecture.
The $400,000 project began last February and was expected to be completed by the summer of 2015, but faced unexpected delays, with the new elevator passing inspection on Dec. 31, just in time for parents with strollers to attend First Night programs aimed at children.
“It was very, very frustrating. It was very much out of our hands,” Forbes assistant director Lisa Downing said of the delays.
Westfield-based construction company Kurtz Inc., which oversaw the project, had a somewhat challenging task, project manager Sean Bush said. He explained that the narrow space made the project twice as difficult as a typical elevator. The finished product sits in a steel structure with decorative metalwork, its inner workings visible through glass siding. Each piece was custom-designed, Bush said.
Crews faced an unexpected delay early in the process. While excavating the elevator pit, they found several “massive” boulders in the building’s foundation and had to chisel them out by hand. This set the process back by about a month, he said.
“It was a lot of intricate pieces with a lot of key players involved,” Bush said, explaining that the project required coordinating subcontractors Worcester Elevator Co., Kapiloff’s Glass, Summer Electric, Atlantis Equipment and Westek Architectural Woodworking.
“We just seemed to have hang-ups everywhere,” Moulding said, noting that assembling the elevator required a kind of dance. “Anything you do for an old building always takes longer and costs more than you expect.”
She said the project finished near its target budget. The city contributed around $180,000, the nonprofit organization Friends of Forbes gave $25,000 and the library raised around $220,000, Moulding said.
In the meantime, operating without an elevator “has just been horrible,” she added, noting that many wheelchair-bound patrons ceased visiting the library.
During the interim, Forbes tried to reach some of these people through its Outreach Program, which delivers books to homebound people, but that program has diminished due to budget cuts. And it does not account for services like accessing a computer or simply browsing, Downing said.
Forbes staff suffered too, she said, as they trekked back and forth to the outdoor book drop, lugging around 1,000 items a day up the front path and stairs in canvas bags.
“We’re so excited to start the new year with the elevator,” Downing said.
It is up and running, though the automated door that connects the elevator to the front lobby still faces some issues, she added.
“It rides like a real elevator, it feels very secure, it’s very attractive,” she said. “It’s everything we hoped it would be.”
As dusk settled Tuesday evening, a ding rang out in the library’s stone entryway. Out came a thrilled Allison Keller, 36, of Easthampton, with her 1-year-old twins Orson and Juniper bundled up side-by-side in a double stroller.
“I just needed to get out of the house,” Keller said, explaining that the twins are on alternating nap schedules, so it wasn’t until late afternoon that she finally had the chance to get some fresh air. “I was kind of crossing my fingers about the elevator,” she said, thinking, “it must be done by now.”
She arrived to find a few construction workers in the entryway, and her heart sank as she contemplated going back out into the cold. But they were simply tinkering with the automated door, not the elevator.
“Thank you,” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together as if in prayer.
Stephanie McFeeters can be reached at [email protected].
