June 1942 — Seventy-two bicycles
By the middle of June 1942 the building was up, and the arguments had changed completely.
Several matters relating to the new north side branch library went to the grounds and buildings committee that week, to be settled before the council's next regular meeting. The first of them was a mistake.
Metal sash screens had been delivered to the contractor for the windows — metal, in the summer of 1942, for a building whose steel windows had been swapped for wood a year earlier to save exactly that. They had arrived in error and had to be disposed of soon. The committee would confer with the library trustees to find out whether any of them were wanted at all.
The rest of the list was not about shortages. It was about what the place should look like when people arrived.
The board recommended that trees and shrubbery be planted around the building, that a new sidewalk be laid, and that a bicycle rack be installed.
"a bicycle rack to accommodate 72 bicycles"
— the La Crosse Public Library board of trustees, June 1942
Seventy-two. Not a rack — a rack for seventy-two. Somebody had counted, or guessed, or remembered how many children came through a rented store room on Caledonia Street on a Saturday, and asked the city to build for that many at once.
And then, last on the list: a privet hedge around the grounds, to go in next fall, and a garden of perennial flowers at the rear of the building.
Thirty-seven years, four requests, two referendums, three tied votes, a federal fund that ran dry, a lawsuit and a world war — and in June 1942 the north side's library board was asking the council for a hedge and some perennials.
The committee took five weeks over it. On July 20, 1942, the council answered, in the proceedings, in the same small type as everything else that mattered.
Resolution to purchase screens for North Side Branch Library. Resolution to replace sidewalk, and install bicycle rack at North Side Branch Library. — Proceedings of the Common Council, The La Crosse Tribune, July 20, 1942
They kept the screens. They replaced the sidewalk. And they put in the bicycle rack.
Six weeks before it opened, the last act of a thirty-seven-year argument was a resolution to lay a sidewalk and give the children somewhere to put their bikes.
Four days later the city went to look at it. City Clerk Fred L. Kramer announced that the grounds and building committee, and every other committee except the mayor's special committee, would inspect the new north side branch library. The tour would begin at half past seven in the evening.
The linoleum had arrived.
The floor covering that decided the contract — the alternate that turned a fifty-dollar loss into a seventy-five-dollar win and brought a lawsuit down on the city — was delivered in July 1942, and the building was ready.
Linoleum and other materials have been received, the notice said, and the building is expected to be opened to the public in the near future.