April 1937 — The city had never spent a cent

Three weeks later, a library board trustee named Gysbert Van Steenwyk went to the Business Men's Club and asked them to take it up again. He pointed out something most of the room probably did not know: the City of La Crosse had never, in its history, spent money building a library. Of the previous year's $30,000 operating cost, the City had put in $23,500; the rest came from a trust fund.

Forty percent of La Crosse used the library. The north side's thirteen thousand residents borrowed sixty thousand books a year through a branch he said was improperly lit and unventilated — while the south branch, he noted drily, "has too much ventilation." Both, he said, should be as fine as the libraries in Tomah, Sparta and Viroqua.

"Four times better accommodations were asked for the branches. After the war the city undertook a program of school construction and improvement. The library board withdrew its proposals. In 1933 when the matter came up again the sewage disposal plant was up for consideration. Again the library dropped its plans. The schools have been taken care of. The sewage disposal plant project is nearly completed. Our libraries should come next."

— Gysbert Van Steenwyk, library board trustee, April 22, 1937

He asked that people who used the branches "present their opinions to their aldermen." The Business Men's Club appointed a committee on the spot to press the matter, headed by H. G. Hayden — the same man they had appointed four years earlier.

The board also said where it should go: north and east of where it stood. That instruction is how the library eventually traveled from Caledonia Street to the corner of Kane and Gillette.

Within a month, Hayden's committee had gathered its data and was asking to sit down with the council's building and grounds committee — not to make the case again, but to talk about sites. After four years of whether, the question had become where.