Staff members and student employees at Mann Library held a ’50s style “Renovation Ball” on Friday to bid a final farewell to the original Mann Library and celebrate the beginning of $20 million worth of renovations.
The ’50s theme of the Renovation Ball served to commemorate the decade in which Mann Library first opened. Attendees did the sock-hop in ’50s-style dungarees and poodle skirts, while live local bands, The Macgillicuddies and Purple Valley, provided tunes from that decade.
The original Mann Library is now officially closed to the public, and construction on the new building is scheduled to begin in November. The contractors, Pike Construction Company of Rochester, will set up a construction fence around the Ag quad. Entrances to Warren Hall and the Plant Science Building will remain open.
According to Eveline Ferretti, special projects assistant at Mann Library, “The new library will have bigger and better versions of everything.”
The new library, which is scheduled to be completed in 2006, will be twice as big as the original library and Mann Library Additions will be merged with the library itself. Also, the vast amount of books that are currently being held in the Library Annex will return to the library once it is constructed.
Furthermore, the new building will have more classroom space, group study areas and additional computing facilities. It will also house the Gateway Caf