Good evening, everyone:

The fourth installment of our tour of the Detroit Public Library system.

After learning a bit about the two-dozen branches of the system, I couldn ’t help but wonder about role branch libraries play in the Live/6 neighborhood.

The most activated branch nearby is actually not in Live/6, but three miles to the southeast: Parkman, located at 1766 Oakman Boulevard, on the other side of the 10 Freeway. It is second only to the Central Library in the number of daily visitors (100-125 per day).

It has a glorious interior, with a timbered ceiling, reading rooms with the original 1921 woodwork, and a presentation area under the windows:

It holds a substantial African-American book collection for children and adults . . .

is a city-designated warming and cooling center . . . and is home to an active book club, a crochet group, a Lego group, children's story times, and complimentary violin lessons through the Detroit Suzuki Academy.

Pretty incredible. But separated from us by a freeway.

The closest branch is Hubbard, at straight-shot west on 6-Mile/McNichols (12929 W. McNichols), near James Couzens.

Recently reopened after an HVAC upgrade, Hubbard is a far more modest operation than Parkman, with much more limited patron traffic:

It does, however, seem to offer regular youth/family programming, including a sustainable craft program on Saturdays for kids ages 5-12.

It ’s not clear what, if anything, this suggests for how we might imagine keeping these branch library resource in mind as we become neighbors. But we probably should.

Rip

‍