Storefront on Main Street
By 1917, Park City flourished as a silver mining community. With that, the needs of the community grew. In August of 1917, two women presented the Mayor and City Council with a petition signed by more than 200 residents asking for a larger library. The petition included that an annual tax be levied upon properties in Park City to pay for maintenance. A special election was held and the Park City community voted to support a new library.
The new library was established in a building adjoining City Hall on Main Street. This building is now known as the Park City Museum. The library was housed on Main Street for over sixty years. The library grew until the library housed over 5,000 books in addition to popular magazines and newspapers.
The library was overseen by the Women’s Atheneum Club. They were only open a few hours a week and staffed with volunteers.
Miner’s Hospital
As the city grew, so did the need for more library services. In 1980, the community once again showed its support. A bond issue and private donations raised $800,000 to transform the old Miners Hospital into the new home of the Park City Library. To save money, volunteers from the community did the demolition work and lugged truckloads of debris to the dump. On September 6, 1982, a book brigade of over 750 Parkites passed approximately 5,000 volumes almost a mile from the former library on Main Street to the new library at Miners Hospital.
Park City High School
In less than ten years, Park City had outgrown its home in Miners Hospital. The Library Board set its sights on the old Park City High School (built in 1928) as a new location. Although the building had been abandoned since 1981, the board was certain the once-proud building would provide the flexibility and space to serve the growing community. The campaign for the preservation of the high school resulted in the $2.5 million renovations. In 1993, the Park City Library and Education Center opened. Volunteers once again helped with the move, this time aided by boxes and trucks.
An expansion of the library in 2004 added a much-needed additional 3300 square feet to the library, but in just six years it became clear that in order to serve a 21st-century community, another expansion was needed. After many meetings between the Library Director, Library Board, and the Park City Council and Mayor, approval was given for an almost 10 million dollar budget to remodel the entire building. This renovation included a seismic retrofit to make the building safe during an earthquake, a high-efficiency HVAC system, improvements to the roof, additional insulation, which resulted in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. When the newly renovated library re-opened on June 13, 2015, the Park City community was delighted to find a library rich in history but filled with 21st-century technology: “smart” meeting rooms, new public computers, and most exciting, and innovative YouCreate Lab with 3-D printers, sound booth, video recording equipment and more. And, once again on opening day, over one thousand Parkites formed a book brigade to passed books to the newly remodeled library, symbolic of the library’s place in the heart of the community.