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The Hampton Library addition.
The renovation and expansion project at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton has won an Excelsior Award for Public Architecture from the New York State chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Designed by Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects and completed in 2012 at a cost of $6 million, the project almost doubled the size of the historic building by adding a modern, glass-walled addition to take advantage of natural light and a backyard garden while at the same time restoring the gabled roofline in keeping with its 1877 origins and the surrounding architecture.
“We have merged the old and new buildings and the garden, so that visitors experience the library in a completely new way,” said Lee Harris Pomeroy in a release. Visitors enter the library through the original structure and then proceed into the new, glass-walled addition—“They’ll walk through history to arrive at the future,” the release said.
The library now includes a two-level reading room on the main floor, an outdoor covered reading patio, a new children’s area that opens to the garden, which itself was reconfigured, and a new walkway out back that provides access directly to the garden. A path from the front of the building will return back to the garden, and a bridge over the covered reading area will forge a new connection between the library and the garden.
on May 5, 2014