Jul. 3—SUPERIOR — When a for-sale sign appeared outside the former East End Carnegie Library in June, it gave a local historian a chance to revisit her roots.
Retired librarian Teddie Meronek toured the former library, now a residence for sale. She also toured Superior’s other Carnegie library building, which is owned by the city.
Superior is home to the first Carnegie Library built in Wisconsin, and the last to be built in the state.
The tours began with the younger of the two buildings, located in Superior’s East End, which has been converted into a residence and is currently
on the market
for $375,000.
The exterior of the building is marked 1917, but that’s misleading, Meronek told Realtor Julie Brown.
“There was a coal shortage in the spring, so the men couldn’t work. It was too cold. So they postponed. It says 17 on the outside, but it opened in the fall of 18.”
The dumbwaiter in what is now the kitchen was built for the librarian to retrieve back issues of newspapers and seasonal books from the lower level.
“But we never used it because it was too hard for us,” Meronek said.
Brown asked what the downstairs stage was used for.
“We used it for summer reading programs and story hours, and used it for meetings. The garden club met down here,” Meronek said, adding that movies were also shown there.
A row of wooden cabinets in the room next to the stage stopped the retired librarian in her tracks.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so glad they’re still here,” Meronek said. “The lady I worked with, Sally, she made this kitchen spotless all the time, especially when the garden club was coming because you never know what those ladies are going to say.”
Although there is a police station sign over the building’s downstairs entrance, Meronek said it was rarely used by police.
Even with the police sign, the building wasn’t immune to crime. A collection of old model cars was once stolen from the display case, Meronek said, and her camera was stolen another time.
The library was well placed in the heart of Superior’s East End, Meronek said.
“It was a great place for kids to come look up things before the internet. And East End at the time was thriving,” Meronek said, with three schools, a mini mart and two drug stores. “Everything we needed was right here within a few blocks.”
The city bought land to build the library on from Martin Pattison, the timber and mining company owner who built Fairlawn Mansion.
“And my grandfather was a builder in Superior, and he bid on this building,” Meronek said.
She didn’t even know about that connection until she was going through papers at the current library and found an envelope containing her grandfather’s bid.
“He lost it by just a couple dollars,” Meronek said.
The building looks different now. It’s been used as a residence since 1992, Brown said.
The linoleum that once covered the library’s main floor is gone. The circulation desk, with original labels on some of the card catalog drawers, has been moved to a corner. The rows and rows of shelving are gone.
But the memories remain.
Meronek pointed out the stairway where she sat and cried on her last day. She worked at the building for a decade before it closed on Dec. 31, 1991.
“This is the best job ever, next to South Superior,” said Meronek, who worked at the branch library in South Superior before moving to the East End branch.
The tour of the Carnegie Library on Hammond Avenue revealed a building in rough shape.
“Danger: Do Not Enter” tape was strung across the entrances to the two main rooms on the top floor. On the lower level, the area that was once the children’s room had no floor, a staircase descended into empty air, and another room’s floor had collapsed.
“This is horrible. I’m sorry. This is horrible. I can’t believe this,” Meronek said.
Jeff Skrenes, housing coordinator and planner for the city of Superior, called much of it “visual noise.”
“It’s the kind of stuff where it looks bad, but even if it looked better than this, you’d still pretty much have to replace it,” Skrenes said.
Meronek pointed out where the mimeograph machine, staff lockers and movie storage were, as well as offices and library sections. The vault on the lower floor was built after the library opened and held a list of the items on the shelves.
There is less damage on the top floor, from which the rebuilt trusses of a new roof can be seen. The city of Superior added the roof after purchasing the building.
“It was more of an undertaking than anticipated because, as they peeled off layers, they found some more structural damage than was previously known,” Skrenes said.
The first of 63 Carnegie libraries to be built in Wisconsin, it opened in 1902 on land owned by George Henry Hammond’s family. That became a stumbling block to future development when the library moved out in 1991.
“Owners took possession of it right away after we moved out, and then they found out they didn’t own the land,” Meronek said. “And so they had to contact every Hammond in the whole world. … Everybody had to sign off on it, and by that time, it had been vacant for a while, and there was an arson fire.”
Other issues may stem from the design.
“There are entries in the board minutes that I think start either in the teens or 20s about there’s roof problems,” Meronek said.
A string of owners saw potential in the building, but renovation efforts were unsuccessful.
The city voted in 2022 to purchase the building
for $175,000.
Despite collapsed floors and falling plaster, Skrenes said there’s hope for the historic site.
You subsidize what you value, he said.
“Thankfully the (city) council looked at it from the perspective of we couldn’t rebuild a Carnegie library on this site for any dollar amount,” he said.
He encouraged any developers interested in touring the site to contact the city planning department.