After Irving Park fire, residents want new library

After a smoky, four-alarm blaze in Irving Park last week damaged their library’s interior — and gutted half a dozen storefronts in the same retail complex — neighborhood residents are demanding a new permanent library facility.

Independence Public Library, 3548 W. Irving Park Rd., was closed indefinitely on Oct. 30, following a fire that gutted several businesses, including the storefront that shares a wall with the library. The interior suffered extensive smoke and water damage, though none of it is visible from the street.

A large black sign taped to the library’s exterior windows read in bold white script: ‘We need a library.”

Yet the residents gathered outside the closed library Friday are asking not that their current library be reopened — but that it be replaced.

“We want a brand-spanking new Independence Library on this site,” said Anna Zolkowski Sobor, a director at the Old Irving Park Association.

Since Independence Library was integrated into the Chicago Public Library system in 1914, the library has been moved from rented space to rented space to accommodate increasing demand, Sobor said. For 100 years, Independence Library hasn’t had a permanent location to call home.

“Because of last week’s fire, we have nil,” Sobor said. “Our communities don’t deserve any more temporary fixes.”

Independence Library has been at its current location since 1998. Its summer reading program is among the most active in Chicago, despite the branch’s modest size and temporary location.

Over 100 children, parents, and community activists gathered outside the currently-closed location to petition for a new building. Illinois State Rep. Jaime Andrade and aldermen Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), Deborah Mell (33rd) and John Arena (45th) spoke to the crowd.

“While this was a tragedy, we see this as a great opportunity to rise from the ashes,” Mell said.

A crowd of preschoolers shouting “We need a library!” at one point drowned out the speakers’ remarks.

According to Andrade, building a new permanent building for Independence Library is a “multi-year project.”

The neighborhood’s first step is to secure the adjacent lot where the fire broke out—the structural damage to the storefronts is so bad, Rosa said, that the buildings will likely be torn down. Rosa was hopeful that the city could secure the privately-owned lot.

Though the campaign for a permanent library would leave the neighborhood without their local library for years, Rosa said the community would be willing to take the hit in pursuit of a permanent facility.

“If we get a short-term fix, it’ll be years before we ever see a permanent fix,” he said. “If we get a permanent fix, we know we’ve secured this library for decades to come.”

Area students, seniors, and other community members have been encouraged to travel to Chicago library locations in Mayfair and Albany Park — each about a mile and a half away — but residents are concerned that those branches are too out of the way for children from Patrick Henry Elementary or John B. Murphy Elementary to travel after school.

“In the winter, it’ll be hard to get to the other libraries near us,” said Stella Schorsch, 7.