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player ready...If you’ve ever wanted to walk on a piano keyboard, Hebron Public Library is the place to go.
The $28,000 in-ground piano, donated by the Hebron Redevelopment Commission, is one of the features of the new library garden dedicated Tuesday.
A wind turbine blade curved to provide shade over a bench is wrapped with photos of Carnegie libraries in Indiana.
The late Andrew Carnegie, who was the richest man in the world at the time, gave a portion of his vast fortune to fund public libraries across the country. Hebron Public Library is one of the remaining library buildings still used for that purpose. Carnegie donated $10,000 toward its construction in 1917.
Valparaiso Public Library, the flagship of Porter County Public Library System, stands on land where a Carnegie library once stood. The old library was razed to build the new one.
The Carnegie Foundation gave each remaining Carnegie library a $10,000 gift last year.
The Hebron library garden also features speaking tubes, a drum, a small stage and benches that fold into picnic tables.
“This has been kind of a journey for us,” library Director Jesse Butz said. “This is the last garden to go in, so it’s been a very special project for us.”
“It allows us to use the library in a little different way than we have in the past,” he said.
Branch librarian Jack Lipski said the children’s programming will be able to expand outdoors. “We do have a very small space for our story times.”
“I am so excited for us to use this for different programs,” Lipski said.
The fence surrounding the library’s yard required town approval. With it in place, there’s no worry about kids enjoying the garden running out into traffic.
Workers putting in the fence took time to play with some of the musical features, Lipski said. Other adults did so Tuesday before and after the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Butz pointed out the garden’s features during the ceremony. “We designed it entirely ourselves; no architects helped with it,” he said.
Sponsorships are available to pay for the features, including an art wall planned but not installed, library Trustee Stu Summers said.
Gardens at the other four libraries in the Porter County system have story walks, with parents able to read storyboards to their children as they walk through the path. Lipski, a member of the Hebron Park Board, said there’s a story walk at a nearby park with more room.
Trustee Paul Knauff grew up in Hebron. “Since 1922, there’s been a library right here, and we’re grateful for that,” he said.
Town Council President John Spinks Jr., now an English teacher at Kankakee Valley High School, said longtime librarian Ruth Alyea helped instill in him a love of reading.
“I used to come skateboarding down here,” he said, from just a couple of blocks away.
“I learned about Encyclopedia Brown. I learned about books with make your own ending,” Spinks said.
Kids come here to learn how to have an imagination. “I think we’ve made really, really good use” of the library, he said.
“This library has been around longer than Dolly Parton, and it will be around a lot longer than Dolly Parton and all of us here,” Spinks said. Inside the library is a cardboard cutout of Parton’s Imagination Library, which has provided more than 330 million books for children worldwide.
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Porter County Commissioner Barb Regnitz helped oversee the distribution of the county’s American Rescue Plan Act money, including $700,000 for the five library gardens.
“I got to be involved in the original library garden with Rotary,” which committed $100,000 to the Valparaiso library garden in honor of the club’s 100th anniversary.
“I never thought I would be able to continue on when I became Porter County Commissioner,” she said.
“Two of my favorite things are books and being outside,” Regnitz said. “I remember when I was a kid and how much fun that was.”
With all five libraries now having their own garden, “It’s all going to be about interiors,” Butz said, with Hebron pioneering the system’s plan to display picture books face out, so children can see what they’re about. They’re currently grouped alphabetically, but Butz wants them to be grouped by subject so kids can quickly find the type of book they want.
There’s more to come, too. “I still have my children’s wonderland dream in Valpo,” Butz said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.