Our Castles are the splendorous places that inspire us to awe and wonder. They make us feel grand, and worthy, and important; and they inspire us to see virtue in our fellow citizens, as well.

On a recent trip into New Haven, my two-year old pointed up excitedly and exclaimed, “look, Mama, a castle!” The New Haven Library is beautiful - with its warm colored brick, stately Neo-Georgian edifice, and Flemish brick pattern which sparkles in the sunlight. My toddler immediately recognized the essence of grandeur in the building. And perhaps more exciting, was learning that it is a place created for her, for all of us.

The library is not a mansion seen through an iron fence, or a State Building reserved for administrative personnel, or a museum for the paying visitor. There really is no place quite like it. To borrow a phrase from Andrew Carnegie, the public library is a palace for the people.

The library has been a primary fixture in our communities for centuries. In our modern era, we might be inclined to think of the library as antiquated – and that the widespread digitization of books and resources will soon relegate the library to a small dark basement. But this cannot be further from the truth. Membership and participation at a majority of our nation’s libraries continue to hold steady.

In the turn to digital texts, libraries no longer need to prioritize the warehousing of books, and can instead fulfill their mission to provide equitable access to the pursuit of knowledge in a different way: as hubs for community programming and events.

As it turns out, librarians are the quiet radicals of social innovation, offering inclusive and extensive programming that appeals to a wide range of residents. A renovated wing of the New Haven Public Library includes a makerspace and offers classes in laser-cutting and 3D printing. Other programming includes instruction in business and marketing for budding entrepreneurs.

Of course, there is at least one set of hard copies which will never go out of style – the children’s collection. As the daughter of a librarian, I spent many days curled up with a book on the extra-large foam blocks lining the children’s room. And later, staying home with young children in a new city, the library became a significant anchoring element in our lives. Excursions to select new books and movies became anticipated occasions, while story time helped us to regularize our routines and facilitated the formation of friendships. The library is a special place for me, as I’m sure it is for many.

As a designer, I’ve been fortunate to contribute to a castle or two. One of the most significant was a library addition for Slover Library in Norfolk, VA. As a design associate at BloomerStudio, I managed the development and fabrication of façade ornamentation over the new entrance, while my colleagues invented a lattice of ornament for a glass-ceilinged atrium and sculptural tree forms for an exterior terrace.

The addition itself, by Newman Architects, is elegant and appropriately set back from the original Georgian library; but in my opinion the ornamentation makes the entire complex sparkle. Whirling aluminum sculptural forms provide relief to the orthogonal rhythms of the addition and turn a softness toward the traditional styling of the historic library wing. The ornamentation, often seen in contrasts of reflected light and silhouette, are both wild and ordered. Above all, they are grand.

The aspirations of the library’s benefactors were centered around creating public access to innovative spaces. The addition includes computer labs, a design studio, a restaurant, and a light-filled children’s wing. The civic benefits are visionary and provide an exceptionally high social value. What adds to the splendor, of course, is the architecture and integrated artwork. So stunning is the atrium that the space has been reserved for weddings, charity events, and cocktail receptions. Yet on any given day, anyone can walk in and enjoy reading a book in filtered sunlight beneath the library’s extraordinary foliated metal canopy.

“The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognize it in them too.” -- Librarian, Andrew Fairweather, as quoted in Palaces for the People.

There are additional building types which take on a similar social responsibility in our communities. Public schools often become neighborhood centers – offering space for community activities or hosting adult education programs. When Svigals + Partners designed a new school in Fair Haven, our design team made considerations for a publicly accessible playground, a library which could open to the community, and we planned to include a bandshell for neighborhood gatherings. The front of the building was set back slightly from the street to accommodate bench seating, food trucks, and a new bus stop, while large sculptural portraits are embedded within a colorful patchwork of brick on facades facing the street.

When the school building first opened, a neighborhood shop owner approached me to compliment our work. “Look at this beautiful new building in our neighborhood. This beautiful new building - for us!”