Built 50 years ago in Strafford Park, Tredyffrin Public Library is the most expensive building to maintain in the township, says Director of Libraries Mallory Hoffman.
An established fact: People in Tredyffrin, Paoli and Easttown love their libraries. They use them A LOT.
Also a fact: All three library buildings are struggling to keep up. Demand has climbed sharply. It’s not so much demand for books but for everything else: the programs and services that make today’s public libraries “third spaces” for connection, enrichment and, yes, the occasional bit of peace and quiet.
So both townships are asking residents what comes next. Easttown is weighing a major renovation or expansion. Tredyffrin is considering everything from another renovation to an all-new building, possibly in a new location.
Tredyffrin is paying Franklin & Marshall College’s Center for Opinion Research $33,000 to find out what residents want. This week, 5,000 randomly selected households are receiving letters explaining how to take the survey. An online portal open to everyone will follow later this month.
Easttown is further along. In April it completed a needs assessment that produced three renovation and expansion options, priced at roughly $10 million to $20 million. A study of the local donor climate is due in December.
TREDYFFRIN: “A BUILDING ISSUE”
In Tredyffrin, the main problem is the building itself. It’s “predominantly a building issue,” says Supervisor Hans van Mol, the township’s liaison to the library foundation board.
CAPTION: Built into a sloping hillside in Strafford Park, Tredyffrin Public Library features curved walls. massive windows and a flat roof that’s prone to leaks. It won a national award for its Brutalist-style architecture in 1978, two years after it opened. The massive old oak tress at left has prevented rearward expansion.
The distinctive building turned 50 last month and has been showing its age for years. After springing leaks for years, the roof was replaced in 2025 but still fails on occasion, the HVAC is touch and go, and the electrical and plumbing systems are, to put it nicely, temperamental.
“It is an architectural gem, I get it,” says Library Director Mallory Hoffman. “But when you come and you work in it every day, something’s going to make you mad. Something is going to break or not work, or you’re just like, what is it going to be today?”
Roof leaks and other facility failures have disrupted operations at Tredyffrin Public Library for years. A heavy rain in 2023 caused permanent damage and required dry wall to be ripped out and replaced, forcing the main lobby to close for weeks.
Hoffman says she has become “really good friends” with Public Works. “It would be a weird month if we didn’t see the electrician or the plumber,” she says, whether it’s flickering lights, a misbehaving toilet or “something odd.”
When water started pouring in near the teen section last summer, staff had about 10 trash cans and buckets out at once. They moved fast, Hoffman says, “because we’re used to it.”
Programs are squeezed, too. The Makerspace holds just 12 people and struggles to meet demand, and the children’s and teen areas are small for a library this size. Hoffman has seen people waiting outside before opening, then “briskly walk” in to claim one of only three study and conference rooms.
“Since the pandemic, the library has really become a working space for adults that aren’t using offices anymore,” van Mol says.
Fixing all this won’t be quick or cheap. The library added a lower-level children’s library in 1990 and broke ground on a $6 million renovation and expansion in 2007. About two years ago, an architect concluded the only ways to grow further are up, or out into the parking lot, which would mean moving parking, possibly onto the tennis courts. Building out back is off the table: A historic oak tree stands in the way.
The alternative is to raze and rebuild, or to build somewhere else. “It’s been band-aided over and over and over again, to the point where it just would be cheaper to start fresh,” Hoffman says.
But leaving Strafford Park raises questions of its own. Hoffman expects plenty of residents to plead: Don’t tear it down. “If you move us, leave the building,” she says. “But then what do you do with the building? I think that’s going to be the number one question.”
Van Mol stresses that nothing has been decided. “We are nowhere even near going down that road yet,” he says.
PAOLI: BURSTING AT THE SEAMS
Adjacent to Wells Fargo Bank on Lancaster Ave., Paoli Library Paoli Library is just 2,700 square feet, too small to offer the range of programs found in most modern libraries.
Five miles west, Tredyffrin’s Paoli branch is bursting at the seams.
“The patrons that go to Paoli love Paoli. It’s very homey,” Hoffman says.
There’s no teen area and little room to study. Nearly all programming happens in one small room downstairs (“maybe 12 by 12, 15 by 15,” Hoffman estimates), which also serves as staff space. Story times draw “upwards of 40 kids,” she says. “The parents kind of stand against the wall and the kids are on the floor.” When the weather cooperates, story time moves outdoors to Greentree Park.
Unlike the Strafford building, Paoli’s space isn’t owned by the township. The library rents it from Wells Fargo, an arrangement that dates back about 40 years.
Tredyffrin Township rents space for its Paoli branch from Wells Fargo Bank. The branch is popular with residents of Willistown Township, which helps pay the rent and has two seats on the library board.
The lease expires in 2027, Hoffman says, but the bank has agreed to go month to month after that, which would make a move simpler. Paoli’s rent hasn’t gone up, Von Mol says, but a new owner could change the terms. As a general rule, he adds, “the township likes to at least own its property.”
EASTTOWN: NEWER, AND ALREADY OUTGROWN
Easttown Library opened in its current building in early 2004.
Easttown Library is less than half the age of Tredyffrin’s Strafford library, and it’s already straining to keep up.
Book circulation is flat, but program attendance is up 75 percent since the building opened, says Library Director Amber Osborne.
“We’re no longer just a book repository,” she says. “We’re a community center.” The library is “one of the last places where there’s no expectation of purchasing things,” she adds. “We have become that third space in the community where everyone is welcome.”
That growth is “a wonderful marker of success,” Osborne says, but “it also creates pressure on the building.”
The biggest pinch point is story time. Every day, 80 to 100 people show up. That’s too many for the designated story time room, so it now takes over the main children’s library.
Story time can draw up to 100 people to Easttown Library in Berwyn.
Space is tight everywhere else, too. Teens fill the study tables and meeting rooms after school. The Library of Things, which lends everything from a telescope to Nintendo Switches, has no room to grow. And the Spark Lab makerspace can serve just three people at a time.
Passport services are among the popular offerings at Easttown Library.
A four-month needs assessment by MSR Design, working with Whiting-Turner, found the strongest support for bigger children’s spaces and a dedicated teen area. Residents also wanted more quiet reading space, flexible meeting rooms, a larger Spark Lab, a demonstration kitchen and inviting outdoor spaces.
The study laid out three options:
– A “full concept expansion” adding nearly 9,400 square feet, at an estimated $20.3 million.
– A “tactical expansion” adding nearly 4,500 square feet, at an estimated $14.5 million.
– An “interior reallocation” with no added space, at an estimated $9.7 million.
The full concept plan would make the library 60 percent larger, but it would require buying adjacent land from the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District.
WHO PAYS?
Whichever route each township takes, it will be a big investment. The question is who will make it.
“It would definitely be a capital campaign,” van Mol says of Tredyffrin. “There would probably be some allocation … from a general fund.” The library foundation “obviously would play a big role” too, he says, and Hoffman adds that its roughly $1.7 million endowment could be tapped.
In Easttown, the library has hired consultants Schultz & Williams to gauge donor support. The study is about “listening to the community … and seeing if there is an appetite for a project such as this,” Osborne says. When the final report arrives in December, the board and library leadership will chart a path forward.
Either way, no one will be walking into a new, relocated or expanded library anytime soon. Hoffman figures Tredyffrin’s process will take three years or more.
In the meantime, residents can weigh in. Tredyffrin’s survey portal opens later this month. In Easttown, Osborne says residents are welcome to contact her directly.
And if anyone doubts that a bigger library would fill up, Hoffman has a story. Her previous library, in Berks County, started out in 1,500 square feet on the bottom floor of a barn and eventually moved into a new 15,000-square-foot building. The board president at the time told staff, “You’ll never fill this.”
“We did that in about two years,” Hoffman says.
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