Friends of the Pittsboro Memorial Library

FYI: Ten tips for Taxpayers Making Charitable Donations

www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=172936,00.htm

Raleigh architect LOUIS CHERRY, designer of the new library

Architect Louis Cherry introduced himself to the Chatham County commissioners with a vision provided by the ancient Roman statesman Cicero: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” It’s a vision that Cherry hopes to make come true for the county. The selection committee chose him last month to design and build a new, $5.1 million library on the campus of Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro. “It’s a wonderful, pastoral setting,” Cherry said, one that can provide both indoor and outdoor learning opportunities and a chance to showcase local artists and artisans.

Cherry Huffman Architects, a Raleigh firm specializing in civic projects and sustainable buildings, was chosen from six applicants to build both the new library and a classroom building at the college. The library is an unusual collaboration that will serve both as the Chatham County headquarters library and as the library for Central Carolina Community College.

Cherry Huffman, which has a staff of 21, has built at least seven other libraries in cities around the Triangle, including Garner, Smithfield, Knightdale, Apex, Cary and two in Raleigh. It also built the eight-building campus for Cary Academy, designed the Wake County Human Services Center and is currently renovating and expanding the elephant and rhinoceros habitat at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro.

“Each building has an idea, a strong statement of identity,” For example, the new Cameron Village Library in Raleigh was built around “an image of an open book,” Cherry said. “The theme is one of transparency, openness and light.” To achieve this, the building is designed around a central atrium, features a two-story front wall of windows and uses glass as its primary material inside -- even down to glass railings. “That was a very specific solution for a very specific site,” Cherry said. “Yours will be very different.”

He said that the design for the Chatham library will strive to balance the durability needed in a building that will get such heavy public use with the need to create “place of great comfort and attraction to the public…A public building has a higher imperative to provide a sense of place. It’s what gives life to a community, a place where the community comes together.”

The new library will also be a “green” building designed to be as energy-efficient as possible, following the standards established by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED). “We are absolutely committed to going through the LEED process for every project, whether our customers ask for it or not,” Cherry said. In this case, the customer is definitely asking for it.

“We want to be as energy-saving as we can get that’s economically viable,” Commissioner George Lucier said. Added Commissioner Tom Vanderbeck: “We want to be quite the example, for the county, in the state and maybe nationally.”

Cherry had brought along Bob Egan of The Wooten Company, who will be the lead engineer on the project, to talk about the esoteric details of green construction. Cherry praised the amount of community input that has gone into the library project already and said that his firm wants to “continue this collaboration with the public.”

The Friends' SPRING BOOK SALE is coming up!

Mark your calendar for MARCH 25 - 27th at the Pittsboro Kiwanis building, 307 Credle Street.

Note new hours for this sale: 10am - 7pm Thursday and Friday; 10am-4pm on Saturday.

Always a wide selection with low prices and outstanding customer service! Please remember to drop off your donations of books, CD's and videos at the Pittsboro Library to be added to the Spring 2010 sale. Your contributions make our sales so successful. It's a great way to support the library! Note new hours: 10 am - 7pm Thursday & Friday. 10 am - 4 pm Saturday.
Special Books List

Library Book Club Selections March - April, 2010

March 2: Serena by Ron Rash (Fiction)

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains--but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

April 6: American Lion by Jon Meacham (Non Fiction)

Born in 1767 along the border between North and South Carolina, Andrew Jackson experienced the American War of Independence as a brutal civil war. Ill-treated by British officers and imprisoned near Charleston, Jackson was the only member of his immediate family to survive the conflict. He migrated to Nashville, where he established himself as a lawyer, planter, politician and militia officer. Jackson fell in love with Rachel Donelson Robards, a woman he courted and lived with before she was officially divorced from her first husband. The Jacksons had a happy marriage, but whispers about the origins of their relationship dogged them until Rachel’s death in December 1828.