The Henry E. Legler building dates back to 1920 and was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by architect Alfred S. Alschuler. Due to an ongoing renovation, the West Garfield Park location is currently closed. When it reopens, the facility will regain its status as the West Side’s regional library—a designation it lost in 1977 due to declining circulation. City officials originally hoped to fund Legler’s ongoing renovations through the sale of a Kerry James Marshall painting hanging inside the library. After facing public backlash, they eventually reconsidered, and the artwork will remain at the West Side library.

In 2017, then Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a plan to build three new branch libraries that would be “co-located” with affordable and Chicago Housing Authority apartments. The Independence Branch, situated at the intersection of Elston and Pulaski in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood, comes from John Ronan Architects. The colorful inset balconies are meant to provide residence with a sense of identity, allowing them to point out where they live on street level. The design challenges the bland cookie-cutter public housing complexes of the past.

Global firm Perkins+Will designed this second Chicago library project to incorporate affordable housing—in this case, 44 senior housing units. The four-story Northtown Branch opened in March 2019 and serves the West Ridge and West Rogers Park neighborhoods on the city’s North Side. The space features a bright mural by local artist Chris Silva and a design lab complete with drafting software and 3D printers.

The third library-meets-housing developments is the Little Italy Branch Library and Taylor Street Apartments. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) designed this project as a new community hub for the neighborhood. The apartments are set back from the street creating a new public space and preserving the community garden Taylor Street Farms.

SOM was also behind the new West Loop library, which opened in early 2019. The complex spans two older buildings that once belonged to Oprah Winfrey’s former Harpo Studios television production campus. The adaptive reuse project uncovered and restored a number of the original architectural features, including brick walls and bow-truss ceiling beams, and unified the buildings behind a weathered steel facade.

This regional library serving Chicago’s South Side opened in 1975 and honors Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who is credited with starting a 1926 movement that eventually grew into the nationally observed Black History Month. The facility is home to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection—named for Chicago’s first black librarian—and is the largest collection of African American history and literature in the Midwest. In 2018, the Woodson Regional Library reopened after an 18-month, $9 million renovation funding new study rooms, an early learning play space, and services such as the city’s Teacher in the Library program and YOUmedia.

After the original central library building became the Chicago Cultural Center in 1977, the Chicago Public Library system needed a new downtown hub to serve its network of regional and branch libraries. A permanent replacement arrived in 1991 with the opening of the Loop’s Harold Washington Library. Architecture firm Hammond, Beeby and Babka designed the massive 756,000-square-foot structure in the postmodern style with playful inspiration from historic Chicago buildings. As the city’s largest library, Harold Washington has to plenty offer, including a skylight-topped winter garden on its ninth floor and the Thomas Hughes Children’s Library which opened in 2017.

Another notable location is Bronzeville’s Chicago Bee Library. Constructed between 1929 and 1932 by architect Z. Erol Smith, the Art Deco structure originally housed apartments as well as the offices of the Douglass National Bank, the Overton Hygienic Company, and the Chicago Bee newspaper before becoming a CPL branch in 1996. In 2018, the city completed a $2.32 million renovation that added new furniture, media equipment, and an early learning play space. The project also repaired the terracotta exterior storefront to its original appearance.

Many Chicago Public Library buildings received improvements in recent years, but few projects compare to the major changes at the Whitney M. Young Jr. Branch in South Side neighborhood of Chatham. Here, a $12 million gut-rehab incorporated and expanded the exterior walls of the existing 1972 structure into what is essentially an all-new building. The bKL-designed project created a new courtyard space, improved accessibility, and brought new amenities to Whitney M. Young—like new computers, meeting rooms, a recording studio, and a fabrication lab with 3D printers.

CPL’s next new branch will essentially be a library within a library once it opens on the campus of the planned Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. The upcoming South Side location will join other public amenities such as athletic fields, a recording studio, and a community garden, aimed at making the Obama Center more than just a repository for presidential records. Work on the project, designed by New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, has yet to begin—delayed by a federal review and a legal challenge to the center’s controversial location within a public park.