The campaign for a new building for Cherrydale Library began in 1957,
when eight North Arlington PTAs and eight civic associations formed a
Northeast Library Committee. The civic associations were Bellevue
Forest, Cherrydale (which then included Maywood), Donaldson Run, Gulf
Branch, Lyon Village, North Highlands, Northwest, and Parkway. The
committee’s representatives were led by Harvey Lampshire, a pro-library
activist and the president of the Cherrydale Citizens' Association.
Once the County Board gave its approval, the architect chosen for the
new building was J. Russell Bailey of Orange, Virginia, a specialist in
library design. Bailey identified his chief challenges as building into
a steeply sloped wooded site and maintaining the residential scale
of the surrounding neighborhood. He and his associate Judson Gardner
strove to save all the trees they could and to leave as much natural
terrain as possible. Their enduringly attractive design has been remarkably
energy efficient, making Cherrydale Library one of the “greenest” buildings in the
Arlington government inventory to this day. The Bailey and Gardner
firm ultimately designed some 185 libraries throughout the Eastern
United States, including those of Yale University, the University of
Maryland, the University of Virginia, the original Central Library
(which was substantially rebuilt in the early 1990s), the original
Westover Library, the original Shirlington Library, and Glencarlyn
Library (still in use).
The building contractor for the new Cherrydale Library building
was the Earl K. Rosti Company. The chief construction challenge was
the carefully engineered retaining wall that forms the rear wall of
the library; it has endured since the library's opening in 1961. On
January 13, 1962, the Northern Virginia Builders Association gave
the Rosti company its annual “best institutional project” award
for the firm's work on Cherrydale Library.
On July 9, 2011, Cherrydale Library's patrons celebrated the current
building's 50th anniversary. The standing-room-only crowd heard
speeches by architect Judson Gardner, Rep. James Moran (D-Va.),
Cherrydale historian Kathryn Holt Springston, and her husband Scott
Springston. Elinor Hodges, Executive Director of Arlingtonians for a
Clean Environment. presented a letter of commendation to the library
for its remarkable energy efficiency. Moderator Greg Embree shared
his reminiscences of Harvey Lampshire. Among the other dignitaries present
were Bob Brink, Arlington's representative to the Virginia House of
Delegates, and Diane Kresh, Director of the Arlington County Libraries
Department.
Cherrydale Library was formed in 1922 by the Cherrydale League of Women
Voters and the Patrons League (the old name for the Parent-Teacher
Association). Many of the founders or their spouses were
members of the Cherrydale Volunteer Fire Department, which held
several fund-raising events to establish and later enlarge the
original 1922 book collection.
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This site is maintained by Citizens for Cherrydale Library, a group of citizen volunteers seeking since 1998 to promote and preserve our most important
neighborhood institution. Contact us at suza1@comcast.net with any questions or comments.