"We're actually competing with ourselves internally to find the space to do the lectures and music programs that we're trying to present," New Canaan Library CEO Ellen Sullivan Crovatto told NewCanaanite in an interview published Nov. 5.
The library she runs opened in February 2023, and its design was meant to settle the town's space questions for a generation. Less than four years later it has run short of rooms. The building it was supposed to replace is now the library's proposed answer. That is the sealed 1913 structure on the western edge of the Main Street campus, which has sat empty since it was moved.
A building the new campus was designed without
The library did not originally plan to keep the old building. Here is how it came to stand where it does now:
- January 2020. The library unveiled its rebuilding plan, which called for demolishing the old buildings and putting a green where the 1913 structure stood.
- 2021. The New Canaan Preservation Alliance, organizing as "Friends of Our 1913 Library," led the push to save the structure, and CT Insider reported its appeal of the Planning & Zoning Commission's approval.
- July 2021. P&Z approved the plan 6–3 but required the library to come back with a proposal for preserving the 1913 building.
- December 2021. P&Z approved a compromise: move the remaining legacy structure to the western edge of the campus.
- Feb. 14, 2023. The new library opened to the public.
- 2023. The 1913 building was moved 115 feet, at a cost NewCanaanite later put at about $2.4 million.
Since 2024 the only public use of the building has been on its outside, where the library put up its "Changemakers" art installation. "The legacy building was preserved and moved back on our campus during the building project in 2023, and it has been empty and unfinished since that time," Sullivan Crovatto told NewCanaanite.
For years, the case for the old building rested on preservation alone. What changed in 2026 is that the library now has a practical reason to want it.
Fifty meetings a day in rooms built for fewer
At a Jan. 20 budget presentation to the Board of Selectmen, library officials said the meeting and study rooms were being booked at a rate of 50 meetings per day. The library also counted more than 1 million visitors since the February 2023 opening, according to NewCanaanite's coverage of that session. "That is an enormous amount of turnover," Sullivan Crovatto said. Selectman Steve Karl said that whenever he walks into the library, "it's always packed with people."
The rooms absorbing those bookings are listed on the library's meeting room request page:
| Room | Listed capacity |
|---|---|
| Jim and Dede Bartlett Auditorium | 200, or 300 combined with the Community Room |
| Community Room | 100 in chairs, 50 at tables |
| Craig B. Tate Conference Room | 50 in chairs, 35 at tables |
| McLaughlin Meeting Room | 15 at a table |
| Proposed 1913 building | Up to 90 |
The proposed room would not be the biggest on campus. At up to 90 people it would sit just under the Community Room. So the shortage the library describes is less about one oversized gathering and more about the crowded middle of the schedule: board meetings, nonprofit meetings and lectures all competing for the same few rooms. "Even though we are so well-equipped with our meeting rooms, we are really at a point of practical capacity most times," Sullivan Crovatto told NewCanaanite.
What the old building would add to the campus
The plan comes out of a Community Needs Assessment, and the library describes two needs it is answering. One is more meeting space. The other is something patrons have asked for over a long period: later hours.
The main building's posted hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Keeping all of it open past those times means staffing all of it. A separate annex avoids that.
"This new kind of 'annex structure' is going to allow us to stay open, let's say, an extra hour later in the evenings without having to keep this entire building open. So if you're having a board meeting or a nonprofit meeting or a community group meeting, we'll give you the opportunity to be there later."
That was Sullivan Crovatto, speaking to NewCanaanite.
The second advantage is the building itself. The new library is known for its glass-enclosed spaces. When the CEO listed the groups the current spaces cannot easily serve, she said the support groups among them would not want to meet in glass-enclosed rooms:
- Public school teachers who need off-site meeting space on short notice
- Students who fill the library during midterms and finals
- Neurodivergent patrons who would benefit from a visually restful setting
- Support groups dealing with sensitive concerns who would not want to meet in glass-enclosed rooms
The design, by Amanda Martocchio Architects, adds glass in only one place. Double doors at the southern end would open onto the Bailey Stewart Terrace, named for the late Bailey Stewart, letting in natural light and connecting the old structure visually to the new library. The rest of the 65-by-20-foot building would get energy-efficiency upgrades, an ADA-compliant bathroom, a kitchenette and a storage room that doubles as a green room. Those additions need a 6- to 8-foot bumpout on the back side, toward the gas station, with a planted buffer kept between the two. Martocchio said the bumpout allows "one open space from end wall to end wall."
It would not be a place to drop in and read. The library says the building would work on a reservation system and would not take walk-ins. Its reason is the operating budget: it does not want to pay staff to sit in a second building watching it.
The price of a small room
Cost has been the sticking point at every stage of this building's story. The renovation is estimated at about $2 million, on top of the roughly $2.4 million spent to move the building in 2023. Measured against the original 65-by-20-foot footprint, which is 1,300 square feet before the bumpout, the renovation comes to roughly $1,500 a square foot. The comments under NewCanaanite's Nov. 5 story show that number still divides the town. Some readers question the cost and the long, narrow shape of the room. Trustees and supporters point to the needs assessment. The disagreement goes back to the start of the project. Opponents of the town's $10 million grant for the new building tried, and failed, to force a referendum on it.
Funding comes from three sources:
- The town: a $1 million grant earmarked in the fiscal 2027 adopted budget, following the library's request during the last budget season.
- The state: an application for a $1 million Connecticut State Library grant, with a decision expected by the end of November.
- Private giving: Sullivan Crovatto said "additional funding at some level" will still be needed, and that the library has opportunities to raise it privately.
The library has a record of raising money. At the January budget session it reported fiscal 2025 fundraising of $1,060,605. That compares with $835,000 at Westport's library, $826,502 at Darien's, $820,649 at Wilton's and $697,729 at Ridgefield's.
The next dates on the calendar
The state grant decision comes first, expected before the end of November. The library said it planned to file site plan and Special Permit applications with the Planning & Zoning Commission ahead of the commission's Dec. 15 meeting. If the project clears both, the library's stated goal is to open the renovated building in late 2028. That would be about five years after the building was moved and nearly a decade after the 2020 plan to replace it with a lawn.
Until then, the building stays sealed beside the Bailey Stewart Terrace while the new library next to it keeps booking about 50 meetings a day.
Buildings like this one, and the long debates over them, are part of what gives New Canaan its character. If you own a home with a history of its own and want to talk about how to present that history to the right buyer, Fatou Niang would be glad to meet with you over coffee downtown. Work With Fatou.
