Haverhill Public Library’s Privately Paid $17 Million Renovation Nearly Ready to Begin

(See also, proposed Stage Street facade, below.)

Thanks to a $14 million bequest, renovations to the Haverhill Public Library will add more windows, small meeting rooms, better Wi-Fi, an upgraded electrical service and more computers—with work poised to begin in a matter of months.

Library Trustee Vice Chairman Richard J. Sheehan said the gift from the estate of Olive Reynolds Macdougall represents the single largest donation to a library in the Commonwealth from a private donor. Macdougall, long known for her generosity, including Haverhill’s Whittier Birthplace, died in 2021 at 98.

“This extraordinary gift will have an impact on Haverhill for generations,” Sheehan told WHAV in a telephone interview Monday. “We are blessed to have it because the library does not have any other source of revenue except for donations for this type of expense.”

The library’s board of trustees floated the idea three years ago to undertake a capital campaign to pay for a major overhaul of the 1969-era building with a late-1990s renovation at the corner of Main and Summer Streets. The project is expected to cost about $17 million with $3 million coming from foundations and other private donations. Sheehan said the library does not expect to tap government sources.

He said he expects construction to get underway later this year and the work will be completed in about 15 months without major service interruptions. OverUnder and West Work of Boston are the project’s architects and Erland Construction of Burlington is the contractor.

Cecily Craighill Davis, manager of the capital campaign who was hired earlier this year, spoke to the Rotary Club of Haverhill last week, showing off the renovation’s key aspects.

“The trustees got together a few years ago and took a look at the needs of the library and recognized that it was just no longer meeting the demands of the Haverhill community, the Greater Haverhill community, and started with a feasibility study, started doing community research and put a lot of time and effort in working with architects to really get a sense of where the main issues were and how they could be addressed,” Davis said.

The front entrance on Stage Street will be clad in red aluminum panels and large panes of windows will replace the Brutalist-style dense concrete wall on Summer Street to bring more natural light into the building, Davis said. The main circulation desk will be moved so that patrons will better see it as they come in the front door. Several walls on the second floor will be removed to give an airier feel to the children’s room and a teen circulation desk will be added. The Johnson Auditorium will be reconfigured, more electrical outlets will be added throughout the building and the Wi-Fi upgraded to enable patrons to access the internet from the parking lot when the building is closed.

Finally, the building will get a new roof and a new interior paint job.

Davis said that even with Macdougall’s gift, the library requires community support to complete the project.

“We will be getting into the community giving phase of the campaign probably sometime next year. But in the meantime, we do want to get the word out and make sure people are really hearing about and knowing what the transformative change will be on the library as this renovation starts,” Davis said.

Haverhill’s first public library opened in 1875 after industrialist Ezekiel James Madison Hale donated the land and gave half the money for the building’s construction. That building was replaced during the Pentucket Urban Renewal Project.

Under a unique governance system engineered by Hale, the trustees own the building and the city pays the staff.

The library serves about 182,000 patrons a year. In the period between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, 323,902 books circulated.