This blog details the three-year journey to renovate Hale Library after the May 22, 2018, fire.
This blog has allowed us to share our journey of recovery with the K-State and library communities both near and far. We will never forget the generosity and outpouring of support as we worked to rebuild and create a next-generation library.
A very important part of Hale Library’s history and story is back in the building.
The “We Are the Dream” mural is an important record of the struggle of K-State’s underrepresented students to be seen and heard.
“We Are the Dream,” which was sponsored by the Black Student Union, Movimiento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan (MEChA, a Hispanic student group), and the Native American Indian Student Body, was dedicated on October 24, 1980, making this year its 40th anniversary. At that time, the fourth floor space was home to the Minority Resource and Research Center.
Harold Carter helped paint the “We are the Dream” mural. He was a senior in landscape architecture when the mural was dedicated in October of 1980.Here is the mural in the 1980’s in the Minority Resource and Research Center. The Center has since changed locations in Hale Library and is now named the Dow Center for Multicultural and Community Studies. The mural remains in its original location which now house the Academic Learning Center, a study and tutoring space for student athletes.
The fire started on the roof almost directly above the mural. Subsequently, the mural suffered from significant water damage and soiling—it even had mold trapped behind it. The paint created a barrier that inhibited the moisture from escaping, and so to allow the wall to dry out, art conservators had to remove the mural from the wall for cleaning.
The mural was conceptualized and created by several students—their signatures are painted on the lower edges of the canvas.Rachel Gilberti, chief conservator at John Canning Company, looks over her paperwork after the first pieces of the mural are tacked into place behind her.
Rachel Gilberti, the chief conservator at John Canning Company, has been working with the damaged mural since June 2018. Initially after it was removed, the mural was taken to the third floor for some emergency cleaning and drying. After that, it was taken back to the company’s studio for another month of further work.
Rachel and her team came back to Hale Library this fall to begin final restoration work on the Great Room murals. Within the last few weeks, they also had the opportunity to put the We Are the Dream mural back in its original home and give the canvas a few final touches.
Dean of Libraries, Lori Goetsch, visited the mural to see the progress of the mural as it was returned to its original location.
Dean of Libraries, Lori Goetsch, said that saving the mural was an important goal of the Hale Library renovation and restoration project.
“The “We Are the Dream” mural has survived 40 years and represents an important moment in time at K-State and in our nation,” said Dean Goetsch. “It was essential to do the post-fire restoration, because many organizations and individuals on campus look to it as a significant symbol of diversity on campus.”
Part of the challenge of putting the mural back up on the wall was touching up the edges and making sure that the seams of the mural sections align. The mural was painted on burlap panels that were attached to wood backing that was in turn attached to the stone wall behind.
Part of the challenge of putting the mural back on the wall was lining up the seams correctly. Over time, the mural sections have shifted a bit so that some lean a certain way. As such, lining them up takes a bit of adjustment.Gilberti and David Gough, project manager, survey the first piece of the mural to be placed on the wall, the painting of Martin Luther King Jr., who visited K-State in 1968 for his speech, “The Future of Integration.”
“Over time, the original adhesive they used on the burlap started failing and so when we got here, you could see areas where the seams had started coming apart,” Gilberti said.
Fine arts conservator Dona Yu works on touching up the paint on the mural, giving an extra bit of life and color to the 40-year-old work of art.
One of the most obvious differences in the mural to those who had seen it before the fire was how absolutely vivid the colors are. The rich color and mixed artistic styles draws the eye and gives the mostly neutral 4th floor space a burst of personality and purpose.
“There is so much symbolism that is representative of a diverse student body here,” Gilberti said. “This is a great time in history to put this mural back on the wall. I think students will really appreciate having something that stands for unity, peace and diversity.”
With the entire mural now adhered to the wall, the conservators are working on final touches to the seams and edges.
We are excited to have the mural back safe and sound in the building, as part of our ongoing efforts to restore the library and the important artwork and architecture within. These efforts ensure that future generations of K-Staters can appreciate the history and stories of those who came before.
Over the last few weeks, art conservators from John Canning & Co., an historical decoration and restoration company, have been busy at work in the Great Room. Their goal is to fully restore the four Great Room murals to pristine condition—not an easy task after what the art has been through.
Art conservators from John Canning & Co. have been busy for the last few weeks in efforts to fully restore the Great Room murals.
Rachel Gilberti, fine arts conservator and lead on the project, said her team has recently been working on removing an older layer of varnish from the murals before they will add a new one. Back in 2018, Gilberti’s team came in to perform emergency work on the murals to save them from further damage, due to the water that was used to extinguish the building fire. They were able to do so, but further restoration could not be done until the thick wall the murals are on had completely dried. Two years later, the wall is dry enough for full restoration efforts to take place!
Fine arts conservator Rachel Gilberti surveys the Agriculture mural, one of the more damaged murals.
Last week, we pulled Rachel away from removing varnish long enough to chat about the progress her team is making on the murals. She had some amazing insight for us, along with some interesting details about the murals that most people do not know.
Below, you can watch a short video segment of our interview with Rachel.
The art conservators use scissor lifts to reach all sections of the murals.
Note: Interview responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
What was it like, seeing the murals right after the fire, to now, two years later?
Rachel Gilberti: I’m really happy with how they turned out, especially because of the things the murals went through beforehand. The fire itself didn’t cause much harm, but the water from the sprinkler system did. They were exposed to a lot of water damage. And the wall that the murals are on, believe it or not, is 14 inches wide so it soaked up quite a bit of water. And the type of stone that you have here in Kansas absorbs a lot of water naturally, so it took a long time for the walls to completely dry up. The paint layer actually separated itself from the plaster, and so we had to go through every crack we could visibly see on the wall and inject adhesive so that it stayed where it is supposed to stay.
The murals that were most affected, the agriculture and arts murals, those were consolidated several times, which is an unusual situation because normally we would start a project after the damage has been done, not while the damage is still occurring. I had no idea what the result was going to be at the end. But we’re back after two years and the murals are on the wall, they stayed safe, there is minimal blooming from the varnish we applied. So now we’re taking off that old varnish and will put on a new layer now that the wall is dry so that the murals won’t have a milky quality to them. I’m happy with them—they should come out really nice at the end.
Art conservator Tim Phebus works on removing an old layer of varnish from the Arts mural.
What is the biggest challenge with restoring the murals?
RG: Number one, we didn’t know how long it would take for the wall to dry. We also didn’t know how much damage the water would actually inflict on the murals. But we’re happy that it turned out alright in the end.
The white circles on the murals flag areas where the plaster has separated from the wall. These spaces will be filled with a special adhesive.
How long will restoring the murals take?
RG: We’re here for another month to work on these, and then we’ll start work on the “We Are the Dream” mural which might take another few weeks to a month. Once you get to this stage, things move along pretty fast. It’s the preemptive work beforehand that takes longer, the consolidation work.
What is your favorite part about working with historical buildings?
RG: I like to see the transformation because it’s like bringing the building back to its original, artistic conception. The artist for the murals considered colors and the scheme of the building itself when creating the art. If you look at the Home mural, [David] Overmyer actually reflects the Great Room windows onto the mural—you can see the diamond pattern of the windows on the mural. That’s a level of detail that most people wouldn’t notice from the floor.
Of the four murals, the Arts mural received the most water damage. However, Gilberti is confident that it will be back in pristine condition soon!
That’s really neat. Lastly, do you have a mural that is your favorite to work on?
RG: I like the Arts, but maybe I just sway that way because art is my thing. The instrument there and the color palette. I also like that Overmyer stylized his figures in 20’s style clothing and even their hairstyles. I find that interesting because not many artists focused on that time period. But I’ve been hearing that a lot of people like Agriculture too, everybody likes the moon!
We want to say a big thank you to Rachel and her team for graciously allowing us to disrupt their important work so we could chat with them and gather photo and video of the murals under restoration. We know how much it means to the K-State community to see these beautiful works of art again, and we along with you, simply cannot wait to see the final product!
This week, we’re celebrating the start of restoration work on the murals! Over the next few weeks, Rachel Gilberti and her art restoration team from the John Canning Company will review the murals and work to bring them back to their original glory.
The murals have been uncovered for the first time in nearly two years and restoration work has begun.
Back in 2018, soon after the fire, Gilberti and a team came in to assess the damage and do as much immediate repairs to the murals as they could. Afterward, they were covered while the rest of the Great Room underwent its huge reconstruction and restoration process. Last week, the covers were taken off the murals for the first time in two years!
Rachel Gilberti, fine arts conservator with the John Canning Company, holds acetate transparencies of the murals from two years and today. The transparencies show the difference in damage to the murals from right after the fire to how they look today.
The fourth floor has seen some significant progress lately, as crew members work on installing ceiling tile and mobile bookshelves. Further work has also been done on the graduate study rooms on the third floor, along with the staircase within the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab.
The stairs connecting the first and second floors of the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab are currently covered with wood. After completion, the wood coverings will be removed to reveal stone steps.Graduate study rooms on the third floor will provide dedicated space for graduate students to use.
On the first floor, students, staff and faculty have been able to visit and purchase items from the newly opened Joyce and Joe’s Cornerstone Café. Right now, visitors can purchase grab and go options and consume them in the café area.
The grab and go section of Joyce and Joe’s Cornerstone Café provides easy snacks and drinks for those who need a little extra energy while studying! The café will offer an expanded menu of made to order items later this semester.Crew members on the fourth floor have been installing the rails for the mobile bookshelves.In the southwest stairwell leading to the fourth floor is a stained glass window, undamaged by the 2018 fire. The circular sunflower window was made by Bill Hemminger in memory of Elmer Tomasch, an art professor at K-State during the seventies. Tomasch made the statue of Johnny Kaw in City Park.Crew members work on repairing and painting the ceiling in the fourth floor corridor. We’re super impressed with their ability to balance on the stilts they use to reach high spaces!
Next week on the blog, we’ll be sharing more details and pictures of the murals’ restoration. We’re excited to follow their progress!
As everyone at K-State begins to settle into the new semester, we are taking exciting steps with the restoration of the Great Room. After months of cleaning, repairing, sanding and staining the wood from the Great Room ceiling, the first pieces have now made their way back to their original location.
Once the wood was cleaned and repaired, Phil Crabb, an employee of Riley Construction, joined the project to sand and stain the wood. He has been in the wood refinishing business for decades. After working on other projects, including historic Noble House in Wichita, Kan., Crabb says he wasn’t afraid to take on the task of restoring Hale Library’s Great Room woodwork.
“I walked in here and it was just piles of wood. Many of which have already been moved up from the floor. So it’s been stacked deep in here. I said this is an opportunity, it’s a challenge and it’s going to be a lot of fun. And every single day has been outstanding.”
Crabb, a well-rounded professional of the decorative arts, employed several skills for this project, including staining and refinishing woodwork to give it a nice, dark glossy look that matches the historic atmosphere of the room and architecture.Crabb examines some of the wood on the Great Room ceiling. Once all the wood is put back in place, Crabb is in charge of handling any minor repairs and giving everything an extra coat of varnish by hand.
Some of the wood pieces in the Great Room were rotted and many needed repairs. Crabb says that after the wood was stripped, cleaned and sanded, they faced a new challenge: The wood would not stain correctly.
“The situation was that the restorationists had almost cleaned it too well. And so, all this wood, when stained, in our samples, would not take the dark stain. I took two weeks to make samples, and I’d be sitting there putting stain on, waiting for 20 minutes to wipe it off, and it still wouldn’t be dark enough.”
After the May 2018 fire, the wood in the Great Room was badly damaged by water and several pieces were cracked.
And so, Crabb turned to water popping, a process that uses water to reopen the grains of the wood to better allow it to stain without any blotches or different-colored spots. The process requires dunking each wood piece in water to soak it, then letting it dry for a least two hours before staining. After using 110 gallons of distilled water, the woodwork turned out beautiful Crabb says.
Several acorn finials sit after receiving a coat of varnish. Crabb says he is grateful for the work of the carpentry crew headed by master carpenters Ralph Lee, Ivan Smith, Claude Crawford and Brain Hauck.All the wood pieces of the Great Room were meticulously labeled as they were removed, so that they can be put back in the exact same place.Crews have started the incredible process of reconstructing the large beams and installing them back on the Great Room ceiling.
Crabb’s mother, Mary Anne McNamee, was a 1943 graduate of K-State who loved the Great Room and studied there often. Additionally, Crabb says he also has a special connection with the Great Room that has made this project all the more meaningful to him.
“I’m not a graduate here, but I’m an alumni in the sense that I’ve taken several courses. I used to go and read in the great room, in Hale room 308, and you know, you get up from your reading and you take a look at the antiquarian books, you look at the murals. There’s something about tall ceilings in roomy environments that’s really good for the mind.”
At our recent all staff meeting, Associate Dean Mike Haddock gave the K-State Libraries team a run-down on the latest happenings inside Hale Library. So, as we’re lining up at the starting line for our massive first floor renovation project this spring, we wanted to give you an idea of where things stand.
Starting on the ground floor: The first floor is finally clean, so the plastic sheeting that divided the space into sections has left the building. Now, first floor looks…. a lot like the other big, empty, clean expanses on second, third and fourth floors.
There’s a little more action on the ground floor of the 1927 portion of Hale Library, where crews are removing sea foam green paint from the plaster work.
Removing the paint will aid in drying the plaster, which is still retaining moisture from the water that poured through Historic Farrell Library during the fire.
This space, Room 117, used to be packed with a lot of shelving, and except for a small group of devotees who flocked to the dozen or so tables that lined the room, few people knew about it. Once it’s renovated, Room 117 will be home to our juvenile literature and curriculum materials collections plus plenty of comfortable seating. More people than ever will be able to enjoy its beautiful architectural details and natural light.
Up in the “Harry Potter Room” on third floor, a lot of carpentry wizardry has gone into building protective boxes around the Great Room murals. This will prevent damage during all of the renovation that has to happen in the space.
Above, you can see protective dark felt fabric stretched across the murals, and on top of that, a layer of plastic.
Once the plywood “rooms” around the murals were complete, they fastened small doors at multiple levels up and down the height of each painting so the workers can climb up and down the scaffolding and check on each mural’s condition on a regular basis.
This photo is of the “dance floor” which is supported by the scaffolding that fills the Great Room. The dance floor gives workers access to the underside of the roof. Recently, a lot of the wood supports criss-crossing the space were removed.
Next, workers reinforced the existing metal roof supports with steel beams. It’s exciting to see improvements like these going in to strengthen the building so it will be here for many more generations of K-Staters.
Now, if you were to jump into the photo above, climb the orange ladder from the dance floor, go up through the attic and exit the little portal to the right, you’d arrive on the roof of Hale Library.
There used to be some massive air handling units out here on the roof, but those were heavily damaged by the fire and removed with a crane last summer. Now, a new penthouse is going up.
Before you think that we’re building something super fancy, we learned that in construction, “penthouse” refers to a shed-like structure built on the roof to house machinery or provide roof access, not “a luxurious dwelling on the top floor.”
Nonetheless, this new home for our HVAC systems will be the nexus for improved heating and cooling across the entire 550,000-square-foot building. Students who have spent time in Hale Library during the heat of summer and cold of winter (and during those hot-cold-hot fluctuations in spring and fall) have heard us say how difficult it was to control temperatures in the massive space. This penthouse and its equipment will make the new Hale Library dramatically more comfortable!
So, from the first floor to the roof, that’s what’s new at Hale Library. Our renovation begins in earnest very soon, and at this point, we still aim to reopen an amazing first floor space in fall 2019.
In the meantime, we leave you with a discovery Haddock made when he was in Hale Library to take these photos.
Nothing like a little dark humor to brighten up a cold winter day.
We’ve witnessed a lot of things go down on the fourth floor of Hale Library over the years: students camping under tables with blankets and pillows during finals week; physical anthropology study sessions that featured skeletons and piles of bones; and, well, let’s be honest, we’ve seen some fourth-floor stacks activities we wish we hadn’t.
But we’ve never seen fourth floor as a woodworking shop … until now. A lot of materials — like the entire physical library collection and one of the murals — have been packed out so they can be cleaned and stored until Hale Library renovations are complete.
Clean wooden beams from the Great Room ceiling fill Hale Library’s fourth floor.
The Great Room woodwork is staying, though. Crews are cleaning and stripping the beams. Eventually, they’ll be refinished, and when the roof and ceiling are repaired and the space is ready for renovation, the beams will be reinstalled.
The fourth floor woodworking space is walled off with plastic.
Crew members from John Canning Co. clean and remove varnish from two decorative arch braces that hung in the Great Room.
A worker from John Canning Co. cleans a piece of Great Room woodwork.Another worker applies stripper to remove coats of old varnish.
Meanwhile, back in the Great Room, conservators continue to monitor and stabilize the David Hicks Overmyer murals.
John Canning staff members have cleaned the murals, removed the damaged layer of varnish, stabilized areas of paint and applied a new layer of varnish. Julia Manglitz, an architect from TreanorHL Historic Preservation, stands on one of the ledges supported by scaffolding in the Great Room. She explained to us how she tests the condition of the plaster by “sounding,” or tapping the wall with a mallet and listening for how hollow it seems. Once she’s tested the plaster through sounding, Manglitz creates a visual map of the condition of the wall on her iPad. She reports that many sections are still very wet. (In fact, on the two floors below the Great Room, the moisture level in some of the plaster and stone walls is as high as 80 percent.)A figure from the “Arts” mural is covered in white spots of thermoplastic adhesive, which is used to stabilize flaking paint.
Additional mural restoration is on hold until two things happen: First, the plaster walls need to be more thoroughly dried out, and second, the rest of the Great Room restoration needs to be more advanced so that the murals aren’t re-damaged during that process.
To prevent the murals from getting damaged while the rest of the Great Room is renovated, conservators have covered them with a felt-like fabric that’s attached to a tack strip that runs around the perimeter of each painting.
In the temporary “dance floor” space above the murals (which are barely visible at right), the roof joists are exposed.
Up above the murals, the Great Room’s decorative woodwork has been removed, and the ceiling has been completely torn out. Crews from Hutton Construction are moving in to start replacing the roof and ceiling in the 1927 building.
Elsewhere in Hale Library, most of the recent action has centered on cleaning toxic soot from all surfaces and scraping up the carpet glue. Since that process is nearly complete, the size of the Belfor Property Restoration crew has been scaled down.
Your daily dose of vertigo is brought to you by the scaffolding in Hale Library’s southeast stairwell, where they recently cleaned walls, railings, light fixtures and the ceilings.The process of scraping carpet glue on Hale Library’s third floor was a lot labor intensive and a little gross and sticky. Library or roller rink? After the glue was scraped off, the concrete and tile floors were cleaned and polished.
Even though the Belfor folks are starting to leave Manhattan, they aren’t taking a break: As organizations across the Carolinas assess the devastation wrought by Hurricane Florence, Belfor will be on the ground with their massive semi-truck command center and their amazing people. We wish them a safe assignment as they begin recovery efforts there.
It’s been eighteen weeks of damage assessment and drying out, packing collections and planning. The space is a clean slate, and in forthcoming posts we’ll be able share a lot more about the Hale Library of the future.
We have only shared a small percentage of the thousands of photos that have been taken of Hale Library since May 22. This week we wanted to share a few more that are meaningful to us. Some are powerful illustrations of the reality of the devastation inside the building; others show how far we’ve come in the recovery process.
We’ve also included a few that are laden with memories and our hope for the future of Hale Library.
Here’s looking at you, Hale: A drone’s eye view of the building taken after the fire gives a sense of the phases of construction over the years. Historic Farrell Library (1927) is at the upper left. The white square inside the red circle is a temporary roof that covers areas damaged in the fire. June 21, 2018.
There’s one aspect of the recovery that’s hard to get across in these blog posts: It’s dark in there! We share photos that are as well-lit as possible, but in those instances, the light source isn’t Hale Library’s lights; they’re either natural light from the windows or temporary lighting.
An alcove on the first floor, south side of Hale Library. June 11, 2018.
The electrical infrastructure was seriously compromised, so the building is operating off of temporary construction power supplied by portable units rather than “house power.” As soon as you walk away from a space that’s lit up with construction lights … you’re in the dark. More than once the power has gone out on the workers removing the books from the stacks.
Now imagine that you’re working in here, and those light bulbs go out. August 13, 2018.
Fortunately, the building is nearly empty now. We’ve come a long way in the last sixteen weeks. The majority of the collection has been packed out, the duct work is completely clean, and the process of removing soot from all other hard surfaces is nearly complete.
Our services have been successfully relocated, too.
The reserves collection surrounded by water pooling on the carpet. May 24, 2018.
The reserves collection, which includes a lot of textbooks, was located behind Library Help on the second floor. Now students can access reserves at branch libraries and the new Library Help Desk at the K-State Student Union.
IT computers sit in puddles of water in a cubicle on Hale Library’s second floor directly below the Great Room. May 24, 2018.
These days, the IT Help Desk is up and running in the Cat’s Pause Lounge on the top floor of K-State Student Union.
And those two sodden and sad locations in the photos above? They’re awaiting their next act!
The second floor office area is clean and empty; at rear of photo, the reserves shelving is wrapped in plastic. September 5, 2018. Room 212, former home of IT Services, is a blank canvas. August 10, 2018.
The Harry Potter Room.
If you’ve been on campus since the first Potter film came out in 2001, you probably know what we’re talking about. The Great Room has inspired comparisons to the Great Hall in the Harry Potter movies for nearly two decades. More than one student has said that just being there made them feel smarter and more focused.
Post-fire, it looked as if the Harry Potter Room had a brush with some dark magic.
A hole in the Great Room ceiling from a wand misfire? Nope, it’s from fire. July 20, 2018. Water pooling across the floor, warped tables. May 24, 2018. This Hagrid-sized acorn fell from the ceiling. Now, most of the woodwork has been deinstalled (in a much more deliberate and careful manner). It will be refinished prior to reinstallation. August 6, 2018.
These days, it’s gratifying to see the space wiped clean and buzzing with activity. We’re moving forward, and the team of conservators, architects, construction workers and craftspeople executing the recovery and restoration plan are wizards at what they do.
A worker removed paint from a plaster capital to allow water to evaporate from the walls more quickly. July 20, 2018. A worker at left removes paint from a pilaster to speed the drying process. At center, a conservation specialist examines fragile portions of the “Arts” mural. July 20, 2018. Belfor workers make their way from the first floor to second. Since this photo was taken, the wooden display cases to the right and left of the second floor entrance have been removed. June 11, 2018.
Here’s a less-known Potter-themed room for any die-hard fans out there. Room 117 on Hale Library’s ground floor was not a well-trafficked space. It was home to rows and rows of moveable compact shelving.
The bulk of the collection that experienced water damage was located in Room 117. Fortunately, most was deemed salvageable. May 25, 2018.
Those who took time to uncover the library’s secrets, though, were aware that Room 117 was generally cooler when the rest of the building was hot, warmer when the rest of the building was cold, nearly always quiet and usually had vacant tables next to some enormous banks of windows. No space in the library, save perhaps the Great Room, offered more beautiful natural light.
The shelving is gone and Room 117 stands empty. August 24, 2018. Another view of Room 117 facing west toward the English Department Building. August 24, 2018.
How is all of this Potter-themed?
A few of our student employees dubbed it “The Room of Requirement.” It always had what you needed. We can’t wait to see what need the Room of Requirement—and all of these now-empty spaces—fills in its next life.
Librarians are pretty obsessive about tracking everything in their collections. It’s all meticulously cataloged, which allows us to identify where each item is at any given point in time, who has it, and when it’s coming back.
Cataloguing pieces of a mural? The oak beams from the Great Room? A 50-pound solid oak acorn finial? That’s a little out of our wheelhouse.
The wooden acorn finials (shown on the cart at right wrapped in a green protective covering) weigh 50 pounds each.
Fortunately, John Canning Company is in charge of disassembling Historic Farrell Library so it can be put back together better than ever. We’re confident that there will be no Humpty Dumpty situations on their watch.
Let’s set the scene: There’s a coupla big ol’ holes in Farrell Library. Charred, scary holes that have been covered by a temporary roof.
Until recently, it was difficult to get up close and personal with the ceiling to photograph the fire damage.
Below that, you have the dance floor. That’s what they call the temporary plywood floor built on top of the metal scaffolding that fills the entire Great Room. We don’t want to keep those holes, so the dance floor gives workers access to the ceiling where they can begin the process of removing the fire debris to replace the ceiling and roof.
Wooden beams that will be preserved are laid out on the “dance floor.” Every piece is labeled so that once the room has been renovated, it will be possible to reassemble the woodwork.
Workers are carefully taking down the woodwork that lends the Great Room much of its historic character. It’s a little like high-stakes Jenga: Removing, labeling and relocating each piece of wood is a delicate process.
In order to keep the ceiling repair process moving forward, workers have to take each piece of wood off of the dance floor. Here you can see the scaffolding that supports the floor.
When Farrell Library is sporting a new ceiling and roof sans holes, it will be time to reverse-Jenga all of that woodwork. We can’t wait to see it back where it belongs!
The ceiling has been removed already in this portion of the Great Room, and the rest of the beams will follow.
Over in the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections, librarians have been going hands-on to pack out the Libraries’ unique research collections and rare materials. This area of the building mainly experienced smoke damage, and we initially hoped the books and other holdings could be cleaned on site. It’s become clear, though, that in order to keep them safe, everything needs to be transported to secure, reliably conditioned space.
“We should have everything out before the end of September,” said Associate Dean of Libraries Mike Haddock. “It’s been a slow process, but we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Only a few rooms of special collections materials remain in Hale Library. They’re the last of more than 1.5 million items to leave the building and go into storage where they will be professionally cleaned.
The remaining special collections materials will join the 140,000 boxes that have already been sent to one of the three offsite storage facilities we’ve contracted to keep everything safe. The newest location in our stable of stables is one of Underground Archive & Storage’s facilities, a former limestone mine in Kansas City, Mo.
Underground Archive & Storage has facilities across the region; the one we’re using occupies a series of caves created by limestone mining. Given that Hale Library is a massive limestone construction, we think there’s a metaphor here. We’ll let you know when we figure it out.
Now, it might not have been the first thing on everyone’s mind after the fire, but we had materials on order that arrived over the summer. We were a little busy, and we weren’t able to make those available … until now!
NEW K-State Libraries materials that were destined for Hale Library are being held in Seaton Hall. You can visit Library Help in the Union and ask for the item you want in person; we’ll retrieve it on the spot. Alternately, you can make your request through our website and specify which library help desk you’d like to pick your item up at.
And, as we look to the future, we continue our work with the architects from PGAV. They recently completed “like-for-like drawings”: PGAV determined what the building looked like right before the fire. Now those drawings go to a contractor who assigns what the replacement costs would be if we were to rebuild Hale Library as it was. These are essential steps that have to happen before the various parties involved assign a dollar amount to the total damages. Only after that is completed will we know how much K-State will receive from the insurance companies.
While we wait for information about total damages and insurance, staff are working with PGAV to imagine a library for K-State’s future.
Until then, if you ever have questions you’d like us to address in this blog, please comment below or contact us at libcomm@ksu.edu.
And to everyone who has been following along with us on this journey, thank you! Your comments and words of encouragement mean the world to us!
Maybe you’ve never seen it. The “We Are the Dream” mural on the fourth floor of Hale Library is not heavily trafficked, but it’s an important record of the struggle of K-State’s underrepresented students to be seen and heard.
“We Are the Dream,” which was sponsored by the Black Student Union, Movimiento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan (MEChA, a Hispanic student group), and the Native American Indian Student Body, was painted and dedicated in 1980. At that time, it was a striking focal point in the Minorities Resources/Research Center. In recent years, the space has served as the Academic Learning Center, a daytime study location for student athletes.
Harold Carter started the “We are the Dream” painting in May 1980. He was a senior in landscape architecture when the mural was dedicated that fall.
This summer, the “We Are the Dream” mural was damaged in the May 22 fire, along with the rest of the building. In fact, the Academic Learning Center staff, led by Liane Fowler, assistant director of Student Academic Services, was the first to smell the smoke in their space directly in front of the painting.
Their area is located on the opposite side of the wall from the Great Room Murals, so the two works of art have undergone some of the same challenges. Both suffered from significant water damage and soiling, and it is imperative that the the wall between them dries out. The “We Are the Dream” mural had mold trapped behind it: While the images are beautiful, the paint created a barrier that inhibited the moisture from escaping.
The Academic Learning Center was very near the site where the fire started on the roof and suffered extensive water damage. May 24, 2018.
Rachel Gilberti, the chief conservator at John Canning Company, has been working with the damaged mural since June 22, after her company was contacted by Julia Mathias Manglitz, the preservation architect with TreanorHL.
“The ‘We Are the Dream’ mural is painted on burlap that was incorporated in the original 1927 building construction, so that’s been there for a long time,” Gilberti said. “When they made the mural in the early ’80s, they came in and painted over everything that was existing. So, in reality, that surface was never really prepared for a painting.”
Conservationists carefully remove the mural in sections. The squares on the painting are facing paper, which is made of mulberry fibers and helps protect the surface as the painting is handled and moved. August 6, 2018.
“Another challenge is that we have multiple types of adhesives going on behind the burlap. There’s the original adhesive used when the burlap was installed, and over the years, as the seams started coming apart, they started injecting other adhesives on the seams. There are 15 pieces of burlap, so a lot of the seams have a different type of adhesive, and each type reacts differently.”
Gilberti and her conservation associates have removed each section of burlap from the wall, which will allow air to reach the wall behind the painting and dry it out.
The “We are the Dream” mural has been moved in pieces to another floor in the library and spread on tables so the conservationists can clean them.
After deinstallation, the painting was laid out face-down on tables in the library so conservationists Grace Moran and Juliana Roy could clean the burlap on the reverse side. August 10, 2018.
However, the Libraries administration’s hope that the mural won’t remain in pieces. It will be safely stored by John Canning Company in a climate-controlled space until it can be reinstalled in a clean, renovated Hale Library.
“They are salvageable,” Gilberti said. “Every piece of art is salvageable. It’s not one of those things. Conservators are here for exactly that reason, to salvage the artwork and preserve what the original artist’s intent is. So they will be saved.”
When asked about the “We Are the Dream” mural, Dean of Libraries Lori Goetsch noted that it’s an important part of K-State’s cultural history.
“We love having it as part of Hale Library and look forward to its restoration,” she said. “The fact that this mural celebrates diversity and progress at K-State makes it an important piece of work to be treated with respect and preserved as well as it can be.”
August 6, 2018.
The mural has been an important symbol to many K-Staters over the years. In May 1993, students gathered around the mural to mourn the death of Hispanic activist and leader Cesar Chavez, who is pictured in the painting.
The Kansas State Collegian reported that members of HALO, (Hispanic American Leadership Organization), sang, listened to music and talked about Chavez’s impact on their lives in front of the “We Are the Dream” mural.
Elsa Diaz, the president of HALO at that time, said the mural is significant to minorities on campus because it is the only thing on campus that can give them a sense of belonging. “The mural means a lot to a number of people,” Diaz said. “It is important to people who want to come and worship their heroes.”
The fourth floor space after the “We Are the Dream” mural was deinstalled. August 21, 2018.
The Great Room murals, painted in 1934 by David Hicks Overmyer, are the most iconic works of art on the K-State campus
During the fire, some of the most serious damage occurred in the Great Room ceiling immediately above the murals. Water from both the sprinkler system and from the firefighting efforts on the roof saturated the wall and dripped over the surface of the paintings. Then, in the following days, the plaster and masonry wall behind the mural absorbed a large amount of water that was still flowing through the building.
Since early June, the future of the Great Room and its murals have been in the hands of Julia Mathias Manglitz, preservation architect with TreanorHL.
Manglitz examined the murals post-fire. At that time, she worked from a lift to document soiling and streaking on the paintings that resulted from sap running from wood trim directly above. The murals were also stained by dirty water that came from the attic. Additionally, Manglitz discovered areas where paint was cracking and areas that were already exhibiting very small areas of paint loss.
Manglitz, a preservation architect with two decades of experience, majored in aeronautical engineering in undergrad. “My bosses at TreanorHL like to joke with people: ‘And this is Julia, our resident rocket scientist.’” July 20, 2018.
When public information officer Darchelle Martin spoke with Manglitz in late July, Manglitz explained that the murals are painted directly on plaster that is attached directly to the masonry walls. In other words, the paint needs to adhere to the plaster, and the plaster needs to adhere to the walls.
“If we lose the plaster, we’ve lost the paintings as well,” Manglitz said. “So I inspected the murals as closely as I could by doing what’s called ‘sounding.’ When we work with materials like plaster and stone, we tap on them with a rubber mallet, and depending on what sound comes back to us, we can tell if something is well-bonded. Hollow sounding plaster is an indication that layers of plaster are starting to delaminate from each other or from the masonry. On my initial evaluation, even though I wasn’t seeing plaster coming away from the walls except in small areas, what I found were large areas that sounded hollow.”
“That hollow area was worse once I got near and below the fourth floor line,” she said. “The Great Room is a two-story space, and the fourth floor meets on the back side of this wall. So the water that hit the fourth floor was then funneled back into the plaster and masonry. The entire thickness got wet; it’s not just where it ran down the face of the wall.”
Late June
Between concerns for paint loss and the potential for plaster loss, Manglitz decided to contact a conservation contractor as quickly as possible. Based on her experience working with John Canning Company on the extensive renovation and restoration of the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, she recommended they be brought onto the project.
Rachel Gilberti, chief conservator at John Canning, has been working in Hale Library since June 22.
Once Gilberti joined the project, more intensive mapping of the mural damage began. By this time, scaffolding had been erected so they could finally make a thorough, up-close examination. They discovered small areas of plaster deformation where it was starting to delaminate from the wall. Other areas of the paint were marked by a fine pattern of dense cracking called craquelure.
A black light allows Gilberti to see damage not visible under normal lighting conditions. July 20, 2018.
“Water escapes through the cracks, which is a good thing, but sometimes the paint can come off, too,” Manglitz said.
Gilberti also noted that it’s important that the wall needs to dry at a stable rate. “If it starts to dry too quickly, the layers begin to separate from one another,” she said. “It’s also important to have the wall dry from both sides and meet in the middle. If it dries just from the back, all of the salts in the stone get pulled into the front and the material on the surface of the stone will come out.”
It could be a long time before the walls are thoroughly dry.
“The walls are fourteen inches thick, and the general rule of thumb for drying mass masonry is one inch per month,” Manglitz said. “That said, it doesn’t have to be perfectly dry before we start the conservation process to visually restore the appearance, but we needed to get it to the point where we feel like it’s safe.”
We work with sculpture, murals, paintings, anything that’s in the architectural art realm all over the United States. I’ve been doing this almost 14 years in Europe and the United States. It’s a lot of travel, but you go where the art is, and it’s a great pleasure to see all of this beauty that’s spread throughout the country.
Late July
When the wall started to dry, additional small areas of paint began to flake off. Gilberti and her team began a triage campaign to repair small areas of damage and prevent others from worsening.
They used syringes to insert thermoplastic adhesive where they found paint cracking and peeling. Once the adhesive seeped in, they placed a clear piece of mylar over it and heated it with a small iron to get it to set. The process helped them keep the paint layer in place and on the wall.
Gilberti oversees conservation specialist Grace Moran administering the thermoplastic adhesive. July 20, 2018.
As they monitored the drying-out process and addressed the paint delamination, they noted that different colors of paint reacted differently.
“Each color, each pigment in itself has unique traits,” Gilberti said. “Some pigments have less binding in them. All the reds in general are more sensitive pigments, so they react differently, especially to water. Greens are also very sensitive. White is a very stable pigment, so paints mixed with white did very well. The ones that don’t have that extra binding power are what we tried to stop from flaking with the thermoplastic adhesive.”
August
Since the beginning of their efforts to preserve the murals, Manglitz and her team have been collecting data regarding how wet the walls are. Initially, they could only take measurements at the surface, but since then, they’ve inserted probes seven inches or eight inches into the masonry to determine the moisture levels inside the walls.
Metered moisture readings indicate that the surface of the art mural is around 30%, but the in-wall moisture content at the floor level is at 90%, which is very wet for masonry. “This is the most fragile mural, the one we’re most concerned about,” Manglitz said. “We can’t remove the varnish until we’re more confident that it’s stable.” July 20, 2018.
“Once we determined that the easternmost mural, Industry, was dry and stable enough, we were able to do a surface cleaning to remove the drips from the wood trim above without having paint actively flake off,” Gilberti said. “After that we began removing the varnish coating.”
The protective varnish was applied the last time the murals were cleaned and restored in 2011. Stripping that layer will increase the breathability of the wall.
As the process of stabilizing, drying, cleaning and stripping the murals of varnish continues, Manglitz and her team have several important questions to weigh regarding next steps.
Detail of the Arts mural. July 20, 2018.
“We need to decide when it’s appropriate to do the conservation work on the murals given amount of repair that has to be completed in the rest of the space and above this space,” she said. “Roof repairs come with the risk of water infiltration, so we’ll be asking ourselves, ‘What can we do to protect the murals? When do we think it’s appropriate to move forward with conservation? What should the sequence be?’”
Even though those questions haven’t been fully answered yet, Gilberti is confident that they will find a way forward to ensure the future of the Great Room murals.
“Every piece of art is salvageable,” she said. “Conservators are here for exactly that reason, to salvage the artwork and preserve what the original artist’s intent is. It’s not one of those situations where they’re going to disappear: They will be saved. We’ve just got to assess as we go. The murals will have damage, but we are here to mitigate that.”
Perhaps the most-frequently asked question we’ve received since the fire is “Will the Great Room be okay?”
The answer is a complicated yes.
The fire came through the ceiling in two locations on the south side of the Great Room.
Historic Farrell Library, the original 1927 library building, sustained significant damage, and it has been a long and difficult process to determine the next steps for preserving the structure.
The fire started in the roof just south of the Great Room, and it spread quickly, so it was difficult to isolate and extinguish. Because the room was at the center of the firefighting efforts, it took on a significant amount of water from both the firefighting and the sprinkler system. Since the building materials in Farrell—plaster, limestone, wood—are all highly porous, they absorbed a lot of water.
TreanorHL, an architecture firm with strengths in historic preservation, and John Canning Studios, a conservation/preservation studio, have subcontracted with Belfor Property Restoration, our emergency recovery team. The two organizations are assessing the damage and executing the subsequent recovery processes to aid in returning the space to its original state.
The Great Room is filled with scaffolding that supports a plywood floor. From this height, crews can reach the ceiling to assess the extensive smoke, water and mold damage.
Connecticut-based John Canning Studios has worked across the country on projects such as the White House and the US Treasury Building. In Topeka, they installed plaster beams and capitals in the Kansas Statehouse that were part of the original plans but never executed. They also completed extensive plaster repairs in 100 spaces throughout the capitol.
On July 20, Darchelle Martin, public information officer, spoke with Dave Gough, John Canning Studios’ historic preservation manager.
Dave Gough, John Canning Studios’ historic preservation manager.
Gough, who has been with Canning for more than 10 years, arrived in Manhattan on July 5 to assess the damage. Since then, their top priority has been drying the space, but the process must happen slowly in order to prevent additional damage.
Currently, they’re working on removal of architectural paint. Gough said that paint acts as a barrier that keeps moisture from evaporating, so eliminating the paint from the walls, columns, and capitals (the ornamental plaster at the top of the columns), will help the walls dry more quickly.
He also explained that a lot of plaster delamination has occurred throughout the space: The top, protective layers of plaster were compromised by the water, and the exposed surface is much more porous, which increases the ability of the wall to breathe and dry. The loss, while unfortunate, is repairable.
“Right now we are in defensive mode, especially regarding the murals,” Gough said. “We’re trying to stop any more damage from occurring.”
Gough examines a section of oak woodwork on the Great Room ceiling.
Once the drying process is further along, the focus will shift to preserving the space and restoring it as much as possible to its original state. The paint colors, the light fixtures and all other components of the room will be examined in historic photos and analyzed through scientific methods, too, so they can determine what it looked like in its very earliest days. The option to restore the room to a more historically accurate appearance is being explored.
“We will take paint samples from the painted surfaces and make an analysis under a microscope,” Gough said. “We will find out what the original historic colors were, in order to learn what the original architect’s design intent was. There’s a lot of science involved in what we do.”
The Great Room, shown here in the late 1930s, used to feature ornate light fixtures. They were removed several decades later.
Plaster and paint are just two of the materials that will be preserved. The team has a complex system in place to make sure all of the oak woodwork in the room is restored.
“We’re removing all the wood in pieces,” Gough said. “We catalog it, we’ll clean the backside of it and get rid of any biological growth, such as mold and mildew. Then we’re going to strip the front of it, preserve it. Finally, the wood will all be stored until the rest of the space has been repaired and it can be refinished and reinstalled.”
Gough said that the bookshelves and bookcases in the room are all oak, too, but they’ve determined that not all of the material is original to the room. Only the portions that are original will be salvaged and receive the same treatment as the oak beams and other ornate woodwork.
“It’s going to be a time intensive job,” Gough said. “There is a lot involved in keeping it organized and keeping the pieces together. It’s a process of reverse engineering, taking it apart piece by piece, preserving it, and making sure it all goes back together in the same place. It’s going to be quite a feat.”
The timeline is equally complicated.
“We don’t know yet when it can go back up,” he said. “It depends on a lot of circumstances, like how dry the building is and how quickly the roof and ceiling can be rebuilt. They’ll also put in a fireproof ceiling and venting. Once all that construction is done, we’ll hope to be back on site and start reinstallation.”
Decorative elements of the Great Room, including carved wooden features like this acorn, will be preserved.
In our next post, we’ll tackle another big question: “What will happen to the Great Room murals?”
Hale Library is in recovery, but we would not be as far as we are now without Belfor Property Restoration. Their crews have been working very hard for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week in challenging conditions.
A fraction of the Belfor crew gathers on the walking mall east of Hale Library. There are nearly 200 Belfor employees that are working on the recovery. June 11, 2018.In order to get in and out of Hale Library, you must sign in with Belfor staff. There is always a worker stationed at the check-in tent. June 28,2018.Belfor crews are tackling labor-intensive work. In order to ensure they are healthy and hydrated, Belfor buys pallets of water in large quantities for their workers. June 28, 2018.A Belfor worker tears the flooring out of Room 117. Room 117 is one of the areas that sustained the most damage since it was under the Great Room. June 28, 2018.
Every inch of the library must be cleaned, including the spaces above the drop ceiling grid and the duct work. A Belfor worker stands on a ladder cleaning with a chemical sponge in order to remove the soot. June 28, 2018.
The duct work and the ceiling all need to be cleaned, so they have portable scaffolding to reach everything safely. June 28, 2018.Belfor workers build scaffolding in the Great Room to help restore the space. June 28, 2018.The scaffolding on the south side of the Great Room will allow workers to preserve the murals. June 28, 2018Some of the work was done by flashlight since commercial power has only been restored to the data center and a few of the elevators. May 31, 2018.While much of Hale Library is still dark, portable lighting powered by generators is available in parts of the building. June 28, 2018
Now that most floors of the building are emptied and we’re starting to work with a blank slate, truly dramatic changes are less visible. Nonetheless, surprises crop up on a regular basis—some less welcome than others.
Since this photo of the third floor was taken, the rest of the books have been boxed up and moved to Executive Court. June 28, 2018.
Special Collections
The vast majority of the materials from the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections are located on Stack G and Stack H. For weeks, our plan was to clean those materials on the premises.
“We really hoped we could set up cleaning stations in the building and go through the process of vacuuming them and wiping them down to remove soot right here on site,” Roberta Johnson, director of administrative and IT services, said.
Unfortunately, Stack G is getting hotter: A water line that provides cool water to the chilling system was damaged in the fire. It needs to be fixed, but that water line is an area of the Great Room that is currently inaccessible.
This week, we received the news that temperatures in Stack H are rising, too.
There aren’t any lights in Stack H, and temperatures are rising; materials there will be boxed up and moved offsite soon. July 6, 2018.
“All of the building except the data center in the basement and a few elevators are still powered by generators,” she added. “The cooling system for Stack H isn’t getting reliable power, and until good commercial power is available, and the unit’s electrical issues are resolved, these problems will continue.”
So the materials in both Stack H and Stack G will be packed out soon and transferred to Executive Court, the storage and cleaning facility near the airport.
“In some places, the building conditions are getting worse instead of better,” Johnson said. “We just can’t risk leaving valuable materials in non-climate controlled space.”
The Great Room
A worker erects scaffolding near the ceiling along the south wall of the Great Room. June 28, 2018.
Additional scaffolding has been constructed in the Great Room. Once complete, crews will build a floor across the top; from that floor they will be able to reach the ceiling and start the restoration process.
The dehumidifer tubes are still removing moisture from the Great Room, and a second set of tubes is pumping chilled air in. July 2, 2018.
Julia Manglitz, a professional art restorer, is on-site to oversee efforts to preserve the Great Room murals, which were painted by David Hicks Overmyer in 1934.
“Her goal is to dry the plaster out very slowly in order to cause the least possible damage to the murals,” Haddock said.
A detail of the agriculture mural. June 28, 2108.
He also explained that she is using a large black light to examine and photograph the murals because the UV light can make damage on the painting’s surface readily visible.
The “We are the Dream” mural is in the Academic Learning Center, which is on the opposite side of the wall from the Great Room Mural. Manglitz hopes to remove the “We are the Dream” canvas from the wall as the plaster dries, but that painting is in less-than-ideal condition and the outcome is uncertain.
“We are the Dream.” July 2, 2018.
In a related effort, there is a full painting crew in the Academic Learning Center, but they are actually “unpainting,” or removing the paint from the walls, thereby erasing a barrier that is preventing the plaster from drying out.
The next step will be to remove the ceiling in the Academic Learning Center, another part of the effort to eliminate moisture from the environment.
One building challenge and one bit of trivia
Meanwhile, up on the roof, there are three very large, non-functioning air conditioning units that will have to come off. (Well, two very large ones, and one very, very large one.)
Three air conditioner units are nonfunctioning. The unit at right is approximately 10 feet high by 18 feet long. July 2, 2018.
“It’s a challenge we haven’t quite managed to come up with a workable solution for yet,” Mike Haddock, associate dean, said. “There’s been talk of everything from dismantling them and bringing them down in pieces to airlifting them off with a helicopter.”
Stay tuned for those photos, right?
About a month ago, we shared photos of the dehumidification tubes that prompted references to science fiction pop culture.
Well, sci fi fans, meet the hydroxyl generator.
A hydroxyl generator casts an eerie glow. July 2, 2018.
There are multiple boxes emitting an eerie blue glow across fifth floor. These hydroxyl generators use a phenomenon that occurs in nature to neutralize odor left by the fire.
Hydroxyls are molecules that are created when sun’s ultraviolet rays react with water vapor in the air; however, they don’t occur indoors. The generator creates atmospheric hydroxyls that neutralize smells by breaking down the chemical bonds in the odor-causing bacteria molecules. Hydroxyls also neutralize some molecules in mildew and in mold spores. The machines are safe for use in occupied areas.
Today marks six weeks since the fire at Hale Library. Since last week, carpet has been completely removed from several floors, more of the drop ceiling system has been taken out, scaffolding has started going up in the Great Room and crews have begun the labor-intensive process of wiping soot from every surface in every room.
As you’ll see here, the some of the changes are quite obvious!
The Great Room
The Great Room was the area that received the most damage from the fire, and it will take the longest to restore. In perhaps the most visually dramatic change, scaffolding is being constructed throughout so that crews can access the walls and ceiling and start the cleaning and restoration process.
In these photos, the scaffolding lines the walls, but eventually it will fill the entire space so workers can access the ceiling, too. June 28, 2018. (Click photo to enlarge.)
The murals are on plaster walls that are still drying out, and we are working with preservationists in order to save them.
Scaffolding on the south wall against the murals. June 28, 2018.Scaffolding will allow workers to access the Great Room ceiling, which warped and split one of the wood beams and caused mold on the ceiling. June 28, 2018.
The First and Second Floors
If you read our five-week update, you know that most of floors have been cleared of furniture, carpet and drop ceilings.
As of this week, the first and second floors are completely empty. It’s exciting to see a blank canvas emerging. Now the area can be cleaned, and we can start thinking about its future.
The second floor before the fire.The second floor on June 6 before the furniture, technology, ceiling grid and lights were removed.The second floor on June 28, 2018, after the carpet, furniture, technology, drop ceiling system and some areas of drywall were removed.During the initial push to remove furniture and books from Hale Library, the first floor was used for storage. June 11, 2018. Now, first floor has been cleared of all furniture and boxes. It is empty and ready for thorough cleaning. June 28, 2018.
Isolated Mold Outbreak in the Stacks
The library is a 550,000-square-foot building, and most of it is still without commercial power, which means that many of our inspections have been conducted with flashlights.
Of course, we are always looking for emerging problems throughout the building, even in places where we initially thought the damage was minimal. However, we now know that lack of light prevented us from identifying one area of concern.
In the last week, we found mold in a small, isolated section of the stacks.
A small section of books has been affected by a mold outbreak. June 26, 2018.A small section of books has been affected by a mold outbreak. June 26, 2018.
So what happened? As the hundreds of thousands of gallons of water that permeated the building during the fire drained from the top floors to the bottom, it flowed along any unrestricted path available. Initially, the stacks were dry, but some of that water drained down the edges of a pipe. Since there is a gap around the pipe where it passed through each floor, water seeped through to the levels below. As the water progressed down the exterior surface of the pipe, books in the immediate vicinity got wet.
Pipe that passes through several levels of the stacks. June 26, 2018.
Since this discovery, we have removed the affected books. We remain vigilant for similar leaks and pockets of moisture throughout the stacks.
Packing and Removing Books
Since the last update, we continue to remove books from the library for cleaning at an offsite location. Currently, crews are boxing and moving books on the third and fourth floors.
As of July 2, crews have packed more than 38,000 boxes of books and library materials.
Until June 28, the elevators were operating thanks to power from generators, but the elevators still didn’t have lights, so crews were moving books from the upper floors to the ground floor in the dark.
Empty shelves on the third floor that were once filled with books. June 28, 2018.Belfor workers help load out boxes of books from Hale’s fourth floor for cleaning. June 28, 2018.
Cleaning Fifth Floor
The fifth floor was relatively unscathed, but it still needs to be professionally cleaned to remediate soot and smoke damage. Even ductwork will be cleaned throughout the entire building.
On fifth, crews are cleaning every accessible surface that was exposed to soot and smoke. It’s a very labor-intensive process. First they vacuum all surfaces—walls, windows, doors, everything—with a HEPA vacuum, which is a vacuum affixed with a filter that can capture particles of 0.3 microns with 99.97% efficiency. Next, the crew goes over everything again with dry chemical sponges. And finally, they wipe the surfaces down with clean washrags.
This process will be repeated on every surface throughout the entire building.
The fifth floor hemisphere room with ceiling tiles gone, exposing duct work in the ceiling.
In the fifth floor, ceiling tiles have been removed, which makes the ductwork accessible for the cleaning crew.
A crew member HEPA vacuums near the ceiling before sponge cleaning.
All surfaces are cleaned with HEPA vacuums before they are wiped down with chemical sponges.
A crew member uses a chemical sponge to wipe down the ceiling and duct work.
In order to reach every inch of the soot with a chemical sponge, the crews put them on long poles.
Used chemical sponges and rags have to be disposed of.
Emptying damaged furniture, construction materials and books from the library is part of the process of creating a clean slate. Day-to-day, sometimes it feels like a slow process that requires an overwhelming amount of labor. When we think about the big picture, though, it’s an exciting first step toward renovating Hale Library and creating a new, vibrant research environment that will serve the entire K-State community.
We’re taking a break for the rest of the week, but check back early next week for the latest Hale Library news! Have a fantastic Independence Day, all!
It started shortly after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, May 22.
Alarms went off in Hale Library. Employees reported smoke.
The building was safely evacuated, and emergency personnel from the Manhattan Fire Department, Riley County EMS, Fort Riley, Blue Township and others responded.
Manhattan firefighters on the roof of Hale Library as the sun sets on May 22, 2018. Photo courtesy Manhattan Fire Department.
In order to save the structure, several hundred thousands of gallons of water flooded the building.
Outside of the library, the entire K-State community experienced system outages. To protect the university’s data center, which is located in Hale Library’s basement, online tools such as Webmail, HRIS, KSIS and others were taken offline. By June 4 —thanks to efforts from staff from multiple units across the university who worked round-the-clock—vital services were restored due to generator power.
Additionally, since the majority of the university’s library materials were unavailable, the Libraries made it a priority to restore interlibrary loan services as soon as possible. They were up and working again by June 1.
This is what K-State’s faculty, staff, and students experienced outside of Hale Library.
Inside of Hale Library, the damage was much, much worse than initially hoped. On May 24, President Richard Myers and Dean of K-State Libraries Lori Goetsch saw the destruction for the first time.
Dean Lori Goetsch uses the flashlight on her cell phone to point out an outline left in the soot after wet books were removed from Room 117.
“To be honest it was pretty devastating,” Dean Goetsch told Brady Baumann of KMAN. “It was heartbreaking to see the amount of damage. In order to enter the library, we of course put on hard hats. We had to put boots on because the water was up to our ankles. … It was really sad. You know, I’ve been here for 14 years, and Hale … feels like home. … And it was like seeing your home damaged.”
Historic Farrell Library bore the worst of the destruction. Holes for the firefighting efforts were cut in the roof, and a lot of the water poured through that part of the building.
The condition of the Great Room on May 24, 2018, two days after the fire.
Many K-Staters are familiar with Farrell Library’s iconic Great Room, but most are probably not aware that the 1927 building also houses the Academic Learning Center (ALC), K-State’s athletic tutoring facility. The ALC is an essential study location that provides vital tutoring services for student athletes.
The “We Have a Dream” mural, which was created 1978-80 by several multicultural student organizations, covers one large wall of the facility. The ALC will have to be gutted, and it is uncertain if the mural can be saved.
The “We Are the Dream” mural is draped in plastic sheeting while drywall removal is conducted in the ALC.
Below the ALC and Great Room, on Farrell Library’s second floor, the IT Help Desk, multiple iTAC offices and the Media Development Center were extensively damaged, as was the technology in those spaces.
Nevertheless, even as K-State Libraries administrators were absorbing the scope of the disaster, they were also launching the recovery process.
Within 48 hours, Belfor, an international disaster recovery and property restoration company, was on site to assess the damage.
On May 27, more than 75 Belfor workers began removing wet carpet and ceiling tiles from the library. By June 1, their ranks had grown to nearly 200 workers from eight states. They swarmed the site, performing assessment, cleaning and determining what could and could not be salvaged.
The ceiling tiles and the majority of the drywall in the Media Development Center on Hale Library’s second floor has been removed.
Most of the carpet and ceiling tiles in the building have been removed, and it’s estimated that about half of the drywall will need to come out.
Two weeks following the fire, all of Hale Library’s occupants—87 K-State Libraries faculty and staff members, 38 IT Services staff members, 2 Academic Learning Center employees and dozens of student employees— were generously welcomed into 13 temporary locations across the university.
Many, many challenges lie ahead for the recovery effort. Even today, there is very little lighting since electricity has not been restored. The generators on the lawn power dehumidifiers and air cooling units in an attempt to keep the temperature and humidity more manageable. On hot days, it reaches 90 degrees inside the building. Workers have to wear hardhats, vests, and respirator masks, so that combination makes the heat even more oppressive. The sheer scale of the recovery for the 550,000-square-foot Hale Library is immense, and there are new problems to be solved at every turn.
Some of the tubing that helps remove moisture from the building is piped out of the windows by the entrance to Hale Library’s main floor.
This blog will be our place to share our journey, and we hope you’ll follow along as we plan for the future.
The outpouring of support from faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors and other libraries around the country has been overwhelming. We are profoundly grateful for their generosity and kind words, and we know that with the K-State Family behind us, the long chapter ahead of us has a very, very bright ending for an exciting, new Hale Library.
Crew members from John Canning Co. clean and remove varnish from two decorative arch braces that hung in the Great Room. 
