The Chillicothe-Ross County Public Library held an open house last week at the newly established Kingston Branch. The May 10th event invited community members to stop in and see the finished product.
The new Kingston Branch Library was nearly five years in the making. The library first moved into the village’s downtown Ellis Building in 1957, but Chillicothe-Ross County Public Library Director, James Hill, said the library’s tenure in the Ellis Building came to an end in mid-2018 when issues with the building forced the library to seek out a new home.
“The problem there was the library was divided in half, and to make it wheelchair accessible we of course had a ramp, and that ramp ate up a good chunk of our floor space,” said Hill. “There was also a second floor in that building that was unconditioned because there’s no access to it. That unconditioned space was starting to deteriorate. It was having a detrimental effect on everything else, so we decided to leave that building.”
The new Kingston Brach, located at 27 North Main Street, offers more floor space, additional computer stations and an outdoor space complete with tables and benches.
“Hopefully patrons will see a nice clean building with lots of books and friendly staff and lots of space just to hang out," said Hill. There’s also a meeting room and as far as we know it’s the only free meeting room in Kingston.
The most notable feature of the new Kingston Branch library according to Hill, is the outdoor space which comes complete with a tables and chairs, and even a couple of benches of artistic design.
"Our outdoor space here is almost the same size as the library, which is something we don’t have at a lot of our other buildings, especially the smaller buildings,” said Hill. “Just like all the other buildings, we keep the wi-fi on 24/7 so if you work second shift and you need somewhere to stop and download a movie or pay some bills, you can do that.”
Planning for the new Kingston Branch Library began in mid-2018. It officially opened to patrons in November of 2022. Last week’s open house served as its official grand opening. The entire project came to a little more than $1 million in library funds to complete.