Archive: Around Town

After being closed for months of renovations the Lansing Community Library Center held a mad hatter's tea party for the grand reopening Wednesday evening.  Crazy and unusual hats adorned visitors and library volunteers, and an exhibit of historical Lansing photographs with actual hats similar to those in the pictures graced the new exhibition room, where tea and cookies were served as Ben Hummel played the violin.  "Everybody's supposed to wear a hat," said Art Chairperson Janice Hagstrom.  "You can't be part of the tea party without a hat!"


But the main attraction was the library itself.  The $385,000 renovation not only increased the capacity of the stacks, but provided a grand new entrance, several new rooms including the exhibit/meetings room, a children's reading room, an office, and a book processing room.  Anyone who had been in the building previously couldn't help but notice the contrast between the previously cramped feeling, and the new warm, open atmosphere.  (Click here for our article about the renovations.) 


Hagstrom had the idea for the exhibit, and was hard at work setting it up Monday with other art committee members Linda Van Apeldoorn, Andrea Lamb, and Peggy Conolly Alano.  The Tompkins County Legislature helped fund the exhibit through the room tax fund.  The exhibit included a collection of photographs that she got from Lansing's Historian Louise Bement.   Hagstrom's son Shea reproduced and manipulated before they were blown up and magnetic strips applied.  "He tried to keep the colors as close to the colors in the photographs as possible," she says.  "Some of the photographs were in really bad shape."


The magnets take advantage of a unique feature of the exhibition room, which was painted with Magnamagic paint -- a special treatment that embeds metal filings onto the wall.  Magnetic strips applied to flat media such as photographs automatically sticks to the wall, and special magnetic brackets hold heavier objects like the hats and mirrors in the current exhibit.


The photographs depicted Lansing people in everyday life.  "There weren't affluent people in the area," Hagstrom says.  "You didn't see them walking around in top hats and gorgeous gowns.  It was all country folk, hard workers.  So they wore more of that type of a hat if they wore a hat at all.  Usually when you see old photographs you see them wearing their very best, but that's not what these are.  These are everyday people from the area."


The hats mirrored those shown in the pictures.  Lorrie Felch donated her 1936 straw Easter bonnet, Andrea Lamb came up with a fedora, and Donna Scott provided a collection of hats, as did Hagstrom herself.  "We have a collection of really unusual hats," Hagstrom explains.  "We have an antique beekeeper's hat, lace caps that women would wear at home, old straw hats, a reproduction women's bicycle cap, a hat shaped to look like a giant flower, and a World War I US Army Air Force pilot's cap."


The tea party offered about a half dozen choices of teas, along with cookies, and featured a mad hatter's hat that Scott had provided.  "When hat makers processed the hats they used mercury," Hagstrom explains.  "Because they used so much mercury they actually did go mad.  That's where the term 'mad hatter' came from."


The library board also used the occasion to roll out their plan for chartering the library.  If taxpayers agree in a May 15 vote, a charter will enable the library to hire a certified librarian, receive income from the Tompkins County and New York State, be eligible for State and federal grant money, and be open more during the week.  If passed the charter would cost taxpayers 17 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.


The grand reopening heralded the reopening of the library, which resumes regular hours this week.  Hundreds of people filed through, some reading, taking out books, and just enjoying the new facility.  Hagstrom says that future exhibits will probably feature more Lansing history and children's art, and she hopes to include art from the Girl's School and Gossett Center as well.  Each one will be on display for a two week period.

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