BOOKMONGER
Grieving a lost library
Author researches the
downfall of her beloved
hometown library
You can take the girl out of Yonkers but
you can’t take Yonkers out of the girl.
While author Patricia Vaccarino has
lived most of her adult life in the Pacifi c
Northwest, her hometown in New York is
the inspiration for many of her stories.
Two of Vaccarino’s previous books,
“YONKERS, Yonkers” and
“The Heart of Yon-
kers,” were working
class coming-of-age
novels.
But her latest eff ort,
“The Death of a Library:
An American Tragedy,”
is something diff erent.
The book is a mash-up of
historical monograph and
scathing indictment. Vac-
carino explores the cal-
culated political cronyism
that brought down what
many regarded as the crown
jewel of her hometown,
Yonkers’ Carnegie Library.
Built in an unusual octag-
onal shape, the Beaux-Arts style library
was situated along one of Yonkers’ main
arterials, at the top of a hill right next to
City Hall. The library conveyed an Acrop-
olis-like air to the city that once had been a
manufacturing hub, home to Otis Elevator
and the Domino Sugar Refi nery.
This week’s book
‘The Death of a Library’ by Patricia Vacca-
rino
Modus Operandi Books — 184 pp —
$12.95
By the time Vaccarino was growing up
in Yonkers, the city was in decline but the
library remained “a sight to
behold, a grand object of per-
manence and beauty, and a
beacon of hope in a city that
no longer reigned as a queen
in manufacturing but was
now being savagely torn up
in the throes of urban blight
and white fl ight.”
She describes in
detail the library inte-
rior — a place of high
ceilings, ornately tiled
fl oors, lunette murals in
the children’s section
and a seemingly lim-
itless supply of books
— it seemed pala-
tial to a working class
youngster.
I’d wager that many of us have similar
strong attachments to the libraries of our
youth. Often it was in the library that we
fi rst discovered our own agency: getting
a library card, considering the librarian’s
book recommendations, then ultimately
making decisions about which books to
Patricia Vaccarino’s latest book focuses on the demise of her hometown library.
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check out. Libraries, for many of us, are a
foundational part of our existence.
It isn’t hard to understand Vaccarino’s
devastation when, after moving away as a
young adult, she returns to Yonkers to visit
her grandmother and discovers that the Car-
negie Library — that seemingly eternal edi-
fi ce on the hill, that bastion of books and
ideas — is gone. All that is left next to City
Hall is a hole in the ground.
The library was demolished in a grandi-
ose city renovation scheme but the prom-
ised developments never materialized.
That’s not to say that nobody profi ted —
but local residents didn’t see the benefi t.
In her research for this book, the author
uncovers racism, redlining, government
oversight and ineff ectual citizen opposition.
Vaccarino writes at a fever pitch, naming
names and alluding to “Trumpian” tactics
and possible mob associations.
If not always polished, “The Death of a
Library” is a passionate requiem — and an
accusation against a political system that
ignored the public voice.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd
McMichael, who writes this weekly column
focusing on the books, authors and publish-
ers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at
bkmonger@nwlink.com