A beloved library that was once falling apart on the South Side reopened Thursday morning, as the Carter G. Woodson Library begins a whole new chapter.
While the library served 25,000 residents a month, people in the Washington Heights neighborhood still remember the awful condition it was in before the renovations. The roof was leaky, and mesh was literally used to hold parts of the brick building together. A scaffolding around it protected pedestrians from falling debris.
“Sometimes in marginalized communities, there are conditions that you noticed and for a while you say, ‘that’s not right,’ and for a while, nothing happens to remedy that situation and then you kind of get accustomed to seeing that condition,” Endeleo Institute Executive Director Melvin Thompson said.
