$3.5 Million Bequest Helps Renovate Rye Brook Library

While the Rye Free Reading Room is reducing hours, reducing staff and trying to cut corners in the face of a $75,000 budget cut, the Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library is undergoing a $1.1 million renovation. The renovation isn’t costing taxpayers a dime because of a bequest left by a local woman who never forgot the library’s kindness in her declining years.

The Port Chester-Rye Brook renovation, to be completed by September, will essentially double the size of the Children’s Department, reconfigure the existing library space, and cover the installation of an elevator, two new fountains and additional story time space.

“That is the Reader’s Digest condensed version of what is going on at the  PC-RB,” said library director Robin Lettieri, who has been on the job for more than 30 years.

She is as much a fixture at the library as the best sellers, the works of Shakespeare, and everything else that goes on between the shelves, from English-as-a-Second Language classes on Monday nights to income tax assistance through April.

“I only half kiddingly say: ‘I sleep in White Plains, but I really live in the Port Chester-Rye Brook Library,” said Ms. Lettieri. In her time on the local book beat, the area’s leading “bookie” has really come to know the community her library serves.

Among those PC-RB Library served well was the late Elise Darlington Lefferts and her husband Douglas, successful business entrepreneurs who owned, among other holdings, Jack’s Fabrics in Port Chester.

In the years after her husband’s death, the childless Lefferts, 74, borrowed novels and classic films through a library volunteer delivery service for the homebound. She never forgot that kindness. When she died, the Lefferts left the library a $3.5 million bequest that will pay for the renovation, and then some.

Construction began in January and will likely continue into September, including a recent shut down Feb.28-March 7.

While the renovations continue, Lettieri urges library patrons to keep their collective eye on the big picture in the face of minor disruptions necessary to complete the work on the 1926 building.

The original building was designed by noted architectual firm McKim, Mead and White. A three-level, 1967 addition  includes the main entreance, reference section and circulation desk. A portrait of the Lefferts positions them smiling down on the circulation check- in/check-out desk; she in a pink suit, he in a beige sports jacket, both beaming over the changes they have helped make in the library they loved.

Those changes include adding two meeting rooms, a teen area and reconfigured space for easier accessibility for the public and staff. Money from the Lefferts Fund previously paid for an upgrade on the electrical plumbing and heating system.