July 11, 1941 — Library site chosen
The council met on Friday night, July 11, 1941, and voted to buy the Briebach property at the corner of Kane and Gillette.
"Library Site Chosen"
— The La Crosse Tribune, July 12, 1941
The Tribune explained what the council had done and why. The referendum the previous April had approved a bond issue for two branch libraries, one north and one south, without naming a site for either; the council had taken that as a mandate and a duty. Three sites had been proposed at the start. In the end the choice came down to two — the Briebach property, and the corner of Avon and Sill. Both were desirable. There was little between them on cost.
"Now that the question is settled, the north side is assured a new and modern library building, long considered a needed improvement."
Thirty-six years after a crate of 225 books was set down in a drug store on Caledonia Street, the north side of La Crosse had a street corner and the money to build on it.
And then, in the same editorial, in the very next sentence, the war arrived.
Unfortunately, the paper wrote, it came at a time when taxpayers were being asked to meet additional demands caused by unprecedented federal expenditure on national defense. True, the people had voted for branch libraries. But economic conditions had changed since April to a degree nobody had anticipated, and from now on the council's spending of public money in the present emergency should have most careful consideration.
The paper had argued for this building for four years. It got it on a Friday night in July, and by Saturday morning it was already counting the cost of a war.
And then, at the end of the month, it appeared in the official proceedings of the Common Council, printed in the paper in agate type between the board of education and whatever came next, in the flat language of a public record.
Motion carried to purchase the Briebach property at Kane and Gillette Sts. for North Side branch library site. — Proceedings of the Common Council, The La Crosse Tribune, July 31, 1941