Ellington Library

Library Renamed for Northside Activist

Ellington Library Web Site

Ellington (formerly Empire) Library was the brain-child of Northside Neighborhood Ass'n founder and continuing board member, Joyce Ellington. In 1974, the school district proposed to sell its current site. Local residents did not want the land sold to a housing developer. "We talked about making it into a park, and I guess I'm the one who suggested a library be built there," recalls Ellington, a former chair of the City's Library Commission. "We in the [Northside] wanted a library closer than the Carnegie [at North 23rd and East Santa Clara streets] for our children," Ellington said. "Every other neighborhood had a branch library, and we were the oldest neighborhood association in the city."

The late Florence Menteer, another NNA founder, said at the time: "We wanted it for our dreams, our library. We felt the library was important to our rebirth, that the neighborhood would die without it. Housing and other things are important, but a library is very special."

Parks and other sites in the area had been considered for a library, but Northsiders kept returning to the site where Ellington Library was ultimately erected, the longtime site of the old Grant School, which had been in the neighborhood for a century before being moved to a block north to its current location on Jackson St. "That old site was special to us," Menteer said.

When it opened in 1977, the library had a collection of 25,000 books. The building is the same size today, but holds 44,000 books. Projections for the year 2020 are that it will need to hold 69,000 volumes in a restricted service area after reconfiguring the library district boundaries. The proposed master plan would add a story-telling area, increase reader seating from 22 to over 100, and enlarge the community room from a capacity of 40 persons to seventy. Parking, however, is the largest issue impacting the current site. Ellington Library has no parking spaces devoted to the library. Instead, library patrons must either walk, take public transit or use street parking.

Councilmember Cindy Chavez, at a March 2001 NNA meeting, pledged that Ellington Library will not be moved, but instead will be expanded and updated at its current site.

Ed Berger
Joyce Ellington
Don Gagliardi

This NNA web page sponsored by eNative, "Know YOUR neighborhood!"