Mark Twain Library

Redding, CT

The Mark Twain Library Association is a private, non-profit corporation providing free public library services to the Town of Redding.

Seventy Acres was Lead Designer, collaborating with a Building & Grounds Committee and three consecutive fourteen-member Library Boards. Responsibilities included Visioning, Budgeting, Permitting, Master Plan, Construction Documents, Bidding Administration and Construction Observation.

The town of Redding granted the Library funding from the Federal ARPA Fund (American Rescue Plan Act), which was then matched by the Library.

The plan includes a large-scale custom radial pergola, to create a sense of outdoor enclosure offset from the existing round, drum shaped building. The radial granite terrace and fieldstone seat walls flow out to the landscape and the Aspetuck River beyond. Various sized council rings of native fieldstone create circular gathering spaces for reading groups and presentations in the nearby woodland. A generous walkway leads to the front of the property where a memorial garden is located and includes donations of benches and specimen trees from ‘Friends of the Library’.