On Saturday, Sept. 6, the much anticipated new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Branch of the Milwaukee Public Library will open on the corner of King Drive and Locust Street.
The 17,400-square-foot branch is the sixth to be replaced or upgraded since a 2010 facilities plan and it is the fifth to be located in a mixed-use development on which the library partnered with a private developer, in this case General Capital Development, LLC and Emem Group LLC.
The new library was built on the site of its predecessor – which closed in May 2023 to prepare for demolition – and is part of a block-long development that includes 93 apartments, some on the site of the former Garfield Theater.
The library's interior and some exterior features were designed by Moody Nolan Architects, the largest African-American owned and operated architecture firm in the United States. It’s the first of the recent branches to be designed by an out-of-town architect.
“They're national, out of Chicago,” says MPL Library Construction Projects Manager Yves LaPierre, “and they've done a fair number of King libraries. So they were brought in to work on the King Library."
The residential component and library exterior is the work of JLA Architects.
“The community was very, very well-engaged, says Library Director Joan Johnson. “It was really one of our better community engagement processes. They came to the old King Branch here and they talked about what they wanted to see, and they really wanted to see that this truly is an homage to Martin Luther King Jr. and so there's going to be lots of elements to remind you that this is the Martin Luther King Jr. branch.”
Johnson says that there will be a portrait of King applied to the exterior as well as three large letters – MLK – installed in front of the entrance atop concrete plinths. There will also be portraits of King inside the branch.
Branch Manager Tiffany Thornton says there will be a King memorial within the branch.
“They also said they wanted a lot of art. They said they wanted a lot of places to work, places to study and just sit and either do work or read or just be engaged or collaborating with people in the community,” Johnson adds. “So we have lots of flexibility for that to happen.
“One of the design features the architects came up with was inspired by King himself, one of his books, being able to have connection and reflection. So the yellow areas are connection, the high-traffic kind of high activity areas where it's more transactional.
"Then the areas of reflection have bluer tones and gray carpet tones, and that's where it's more just sort of maybe people doing solo activities or quiet conversation or something like that.”
As has become standard in the new library branches, there is plenty of seating, multiple study rooms of varying sizes, a teen area, a children’s area, a makerspace (this one has a pop-up recording studio), computers and printers, and, of course, books. Our community room is going to be one of the biggest community spaces that we have within MPL,” says Thornton. “I's 40 feet by 45 feet, a total of 1,800 square feet.”
The library is full of natural light and there are some great details already, though work was ongoing when I visited, so there is more to come.
I especially liked the orange and yellow dangling light fixtures and matching wall decor in the children’s area and especially the nearby reading area with recessed circular benches in the wall.
It will definitely be worth checking out in a few days when all the finishing touches are complete.
The branch is also the greenest in the MPL system with 132 solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling, a green roof, pervious paving and electric vehicle charging stations.
The solar panels alone are expected to save the library $15,000 a year in utilities costs, and the the array and geothermal heating and cooling system make MPL eligible for at least a 30 percent rebate via the Inflation Reduction Act, according to library sources.
Johnson says that some of the lessons from earlier branch designs were implemented in the back-of-house areas.
“On every single project that we've done,” Johnson explains, “before we actually get into the nitty gritty of the design for the next project, we always go back and look at what were some of the things that we wish we would've done differently. There have been a few things where we said, ‘oh, we need to do a better job of that.’
“In many cases, it was the behind the scenes areas where spaces for storage ,especially for children's materials, were not flexible enough. They weren't big enough and staff had a hard time finding places to put some of the items that they need to use for their programs. We wanted things to be kind of neat and everything has its place. But that very first project at Villard was not flexible enough, it was not big enough. And so we did a better job, especially with the behind the scenes areas that better supported the work of the staff.”
The new branch serves as something of a double homecoming for manager Thornton.
In addition to being where she had her first job, the King Library is Thornton’s childhood library.
“I think it was time for this library to be updated and renovated,” she says. “This is the branch that I went to as a child. It's nice to have updated resources for the Harambe community, to be able to support all of our community users that enjoy the library that are excited for this.
“The libraries as a whole are institutions within the community. Having access to all the various resources for free – access to computers, being able to check out materials, being able to utilize resources that you may not have access – is a priceless resource that we definitely need within all of our communities.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
