August 1938 — Three hundred dollars and a street corner

Thursday, August 4 — the corners

The PWA route reopened. On the evening of Thursday, August 4, 1938, the council committees met and recommended that PWA grants be requested for two new branch libraries and a new No. 4 fire station. In the same resolution they finally authorized the library trustees to secure tentative plans — the thing that had been ordered eleven months earlier and never done.

In the chair was Alderman Warren Smith, the same man who in 1934 had moved to have Otto Merman draw plans, and watched the council place them on file.

Then the board said, for the first time on the record, where it wanted to build. Its preferred corners were the southwest corner of Avon and Sill streets on the north side, and the southeast corner of 16th and Farnam on the south.

Alderman Kempter wanted to know why the library could not simply go into the proposed new Logan high school addition. Board member J. M. Holley answered that the question had come up before, and that the experience of library people across the country was that libraries attached to schools become subordinated to juvenile use, and adults stop using them. Minneapolis and Madison, he said, had both learned it.

"I think that is a very poor reason."

— Alderman Kempter, The La Crosse Tribune, August 5, 1938

Alderman Conrad Severson asked what the board actually held. It held an option on Avon and Sill for $6,200, and an option on Kane and Gillette for $6,500.

That is the first time this address appears in the story. Three hundred dollars more than the other corner.

Chairman Smith explained the board's thinking: get as near the center of the north side as possible. Logan Street was generally taken as the center line, and Sill Street was one block north of Logan. Severson proposed putting the library and the No. 4 fire station in a single building. A. H. Sanford and P. M. Gelatt said the board had been working to a maximum of $50,000 each; Severson insisted $15,000 to $20,000 would buy a modern library of the size needed; Alderman Muth suggested the city set the figure high when it asked the PWA. Kempter closed by restating that the library belonged in the Logan school addition.

Five aldermen, two board members, two street corners and a three-hundred-dollar difference. The argument they started that Thursday evening would run another three years.

Friday, August 5 — ten to nine

The council met in special session the following night. On the table were two resolutions: send the branch library project to the PWA, and hire Chapman and Cutler of Chicago to give a legal opinion on the bond issues that would pay for it.

Aldermen William P. Roellig and A. R. Kempter moved to amend — build the branch libraries on school property instead of buying new sites. Kempter argued the north side branch alone, saying it would be cheaper to build and cheaper to run as part of the new Logan high school addition. He could see no good reason not to, he said, and many good reasons why they should.

Warren Smith said the library board had made its recommendation and that was enough for him; in his opinion the board's choice of sites should be adopted. Arthur O. Scott — the same alderman who had moved for plans the previous September — said the subject should not be discussed at all, since the question of location was not before the council. City Engineer John H. Barth made the practical point: the school project was already before the PWA, and changing the plans now would delay everything.

Roellig pressed anyway, offering a second amendment to design the buildings for the Logan school grounds and for the new junior high property in the south east of the city. Conrad Severson answered him.

"Recently you bought a lot to enlarge the Roosevelt school playground, and now you want to build on school grounds and cut down the play area."

— Alderman Conrad Severson, The La Crosse Tribune, August 6, 1938

Roellig's amendment was defeated ten votes to nine. The original resolution passed twelve to seven. The city would buy land.

One vote. Three years before the one that chose this corner, another single vote kept the north side's library from being a room inside a high school.