BPL opens new teen, children’s spaces

Zoe Colimon, 9, of West Roxbury, takes in the fanfare Feb. 21 at the opening of the new children’s room at the Boston Public Library’s Copley branch while her brother Marcus, 5, settles in with a pile of books about snakes.

The Boston Public Library on Saturday unveiled the renovated second floor of its Central Branch’s Johnson Building, featuring dazzling new spaces for children, tweens, teens and adults.

“This library today shows our commitment to the youth of the city of the future, and how we’re going to help them grow and learn and expand their brains,” said Mayor Martin Walsh at the Feb. 21 ribbon-cutting event, “and give them opportunities to have their big dreams come true.”

From the sensory play wall in the doubled-in-size children’s room to the media lounge and diner-style booths and tables in “Teen Central” to the deep red bookshelves and carpet in the open community reading space, the new second floor is dominated by bold colors and natural light.

In the teen room, while books are still plainly in sight and a lighted sign spells out “READ,” young people can engage with technology as well — accessing computers, enjoying Play Station 4 games, learning graphic design software and creating objects with a 3D printer. Software in the digital lab includes Anime Studio, Manga Studio, FL Studio, Adobe Creative Suite, Comic Life and Sculptris.

Teen Central is designed for students in grades 6–12, though there is also an area in the Children’s Library geared toward “tweens” who have aged out of most children’s books but aren’t quite ready for the teen room.

Upcoming youth-oriented programs at the library include after-school anime and book discussion clubs, “maker” and coding sessions and serious fare such as resume preparation and college financial aid workshops. March 9–14 is Teen Tech Week, and BPL will offer 3D design sessions for creating and printing three-dimensional models. (Branch libraries in Dudley, East Boston, Grove Hall, Hyde Park and Mattapan will also have special technology programs that week.)

The renovated second floor is the first phase of a larger overhaul of the Johnson Building, which opened in 1972 next to the library’s older McKim Building. Among the improvements is the removal of the heavy concrete slabs that surrounded the building, creating a forbidding appearance at ground level.

“Today we celebrate … a library that says ‘Welcome’ where its predecessor said ‘Stand back,’” said Jeffrey Rudman, chair of the BPL Board of Trustees, during the speaking program.

Rudman said the challenge for the BPL is “to use this institution and this wonderful technology to better serve every toddler, every school-age child, every teen, every college student, every new citizen, every adult learner … anybody who wants a better shot at the American Dream.”

BPL President Amy Ryan mentioned that Boston’s library, established in 1848, was the first municipally-funded public library in the U.S., and the first to have a dedicated children’s room. Before Walsh performed the ceremonial ribbon-cutting in front of the “Children’s Library,” Danielle Legros Georges, the city’s new Poet Laureate, recited a poem to Boston.

After the program, visitors of all ages wandered through the new spaces. Some took seats in the media lounge to play video games on two 80-inch screens. Others browsed the display of old-fashioned typewriters atop the fiction stacks in the teen room. Children ducked in and out of small passageways underneath the three new lion cub sculptures. And some were entranced by cutting-edge technology in action.

“I had never seen a 3D printer before,” said Mimi Jones, a longtime member of the Friends of the Dudley Library who helped forge the BPL strategic plan and its principles of excellence several years ago.

Standing in the digital lab of Teen Central, Jones said the new second floor spaces are beyond what she had even imagined the renovation project would produce.

“The openness, the lighting, the colors,” she marveled. “Libraries play a very special role — and I think a very special space and place have been created here for our children.”