‘We need our library’: Nicetown-Tioga branch reopens after 6-month closure due to earthquake damage

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The Nicetown-Tioga library reopened Monday after being closed for more than six months due to damage from the magnitude 4.8 earthquake that shook the Philly region in April.

Library patrons and staff were glad to see the return of a community resource.

“I am just so thrilled that it’s open,” said voracious reader Linda Diggs, who came to the library Monday. “We need our library, and I love it.”

The April earthquake, rare for the region, rocked an already compromised structure. It caused temporary braces holding up floor beams to fall, leaving parts of the first floor without adequate support, according to Free Library spokesperson Mark Graham. Philadelphia libraries frequently close due to short staffing, renovations or cooling issues.

“Since the city of Philadelphia takes the safety of every Philadelphian seriously, we needed to close to make sure the library was a safe place to be,” Graham wrote in an emailed response to questions.

The city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections declared the building unsafe in April, citing a bulged side and rear wall and a fracture on the front foundation wall. The building failed another inspection in July, due to unsafe first-floor joists. It passed its latest inspection in August.

As the first floor was being stabilized, the Free Library discovered other issues that needed fixing: electrical infrastructure that limited the capacity of the HVAC system and problems with the HVAC system itself. Those repairs have since been made, Graham said.

“We are very happy to be able to reopen and serve the community now,” he said.

Programs and services that were lost during the closure can now start up again. These include adult basic literacy classes, monthly visits from city job recruiters, distribution of free Narcan and fentanyl test strips, after-school meals for kids and computer help, said Nicetown-Tioga branch manager Catherine Martin.

“People use the library for just a myriad of different reasons,” she said. “We do tend to get a lot of folks using our computers asking for assistance with computers, learning technology. We got a lot of young people coming, looking for a safe place after school to have fun, to relax, to do their homework.”

Lenise Miller, former president of the Friends of the Nicetown-Tioga Library group, said the closure was a big deal for the community.

“A lot of seniors used to come here to get on the computers and do a little work,” she said. “The children, they didn’t have anything to do during the summertime. … Everybody’s so happy that it is finally open.”

Local filmmaker Eboni Zamani hopes to reschedule a series of filmmaking workshops for teens and adults she had planned to teach this spring, before the closure.

“It’s the neighborhood library I grew up in,” she said. “It was the first place I learned how to read chapter books. It was the first place that I actually got on a computer.”

The Nicetown-Tioga library branch reopened just in time to serve as a polling place for the November general election.

The Free Library considers the repairs made in recent months a “temporary fix,” Graham said. The Free Library is working with the city’s Capital Programs Office to get a new structural system designed that’ll strengthen the floor on a long-term basis, he said.

Chinita Bradshaw, a block captain nearby, said she worried the branch might never reopen. Now she hopes to see it renovated and expanded.

“We deserve a makeover,” she said. “They’re changing everything around here, so let’s upgrade the library.”

Before the closure, Tariq Shabazz and his daughters, ages 13 and 7, were regulars at the library, coming several times a week for homework help and activities like cooking demonstrations and arts and crafts. Shabazz’s younger daughter, Zameena, was particularly “devastated” by the closure and frequently asked him when the library would reopen, he said.

Zameena said without her neighborhood library to go to, she was “bored all the time.”

But while taking a break from playing games with her sister at the library Monday, the 7-year-old said she felt “happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy” to have it open again.