At around 3am each morning, Gaynor Williams would find herself worrying about the former Andrew Carnegie Library in Tuebrook.
The 100 year old building and cherished community asset was forced to close in 2006 due to health and safety fears arising from its dilapidated structure. After being left to rot for the best part of a decade, it was eventually thrown a lifeline when critical remediation works were carried out in 2014, thanks to funding from the building's owners, Liverpool city council.
Ms Williams is the CEO of Lister Steps, the lead developers on the project and a children’s charity which proudly now calls the library its permanent home. But the sleepless nights didn’t come to an abrupt end once the emergency works were carried out.
READ MORE: Library that was left to rot now up for major architecture award
Further support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2016 meant the project to restore and reopen the library gained momentum. But once contractors were on site and started stripping everything back, they found significant damage to the roof.
Ms Williams said: “It was seriously threatening the project - the building was full of wet rot. We were all concerned about how sustainable the project was if we discovered more issues. There were a lot of honest and frank discussions about the priority of the building. It was one of those situations where you think ‘what have we started'.”
Six years on and the ‘The Old Library’, as it is now known, has been successfully, although painstakingly restored - reopening for the first time in 14 years in 2020. Where once the library used to give Ms Williams sleepless nights, it’s currently keeping the city’s hopes for an historic quadruple alive.
In April, the Old Library won a coveted Royal Institute of British Architects North West award. Last month it picked up further accolades from the Architects’ Journal and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
Having almost seen the structure confined to ruin less than a decade ago, Ms Williams is “delighted” with the recognition, but says the awards are for the building, its architects and the whole community to be “proud of.”
She said: “If it helps put Tuebrook on the map then brilliant. That's what we want - people looking at Tuebrook in a different way.
“You walk around Liverpool city centre and there's beautiful buildings. But there’s beautiful buildings in our communities as well. This project shows that [these types of buildings can be brought back]. It takes time but it can be done. It's worth it at the end of the day.”
The restoration, which has delivered a range of communal spaces and a nursery within the structure, was designed by Manchester based OMI Architects. Its associate director, Stuart McGrath, told the ECHO how the practice is “always looking to breathe life into a building”, but the former Andrew Carnegie library posed its own set of specific challenges.
He said: “We first set eyes on the building in 2015 and it was in a bad, bad way when we got involved. It got considerably worse as we moved towards getting the project onto site and into construction.”
However Mr McGrath said the building had “great bones” and OMI remained confident they could deliver the elements that now make up the Old Library - one that was shaped by public consultation with those living in the local area.
Mr McGrath added: “What struck us about it was just how engaged the local community were with the building and its history. Everybody who we spoke to has their own story about their experience in the building over the years.
“Everyone saw it as the centre of the community. It was important to try and preserve that and bring that back in the finished building.”
The miraculous turnaround and the library’s re-established importance to the Tuebrook community is not lost on Gaynor Williams. She added: “It was becoming an eyesore on Green Lane. It was a symbol of the decline of the area.
“Part of our main aim was to be the catalyst that starts the regeneration process and gets that community pride into the area, somewhere that gets people working together so they have a place to meet. I think it really is a story about the power of community.
“We got so many local people who were supportive of what we were doing. Really championing the library. During that we found out how loved the building was. And how people wanted to see it back.”
