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The new Northwest Portland Library opens on NW Pettygrove
If you’re hunting for an excuse — even for just an hour or so — to knock off your doomscrolling and social media time-wasting, now you’ve got a solid reason. Multnomah County’s $21 million Northwest Portland Library, which opened Saturday morning to considerable fanfare, is more than double the square footage of its predecessor and offers, yes, books you can read.
The library at 2030 NW Pettygrove St. replaces the one on Northwest Thurman Street that closed in November after 25 years of operation. After celebratory comments from dignitaries and an ear-splitting percussion performance by the Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers (for which they actually handed out earplugs — wait, this is a library, right?) several hundred folks traipsed into the building to check out its features.
A voter-approved bond measure in 2020 helped fund the space, which includes five community meeting rooms, a learning space specially for little kids, artwork installations and — because this is not your grandmother’s library — WiFi and other tech amenities, for when you’ve had it with all those books.
Here’s more information on the Northwest Library. It’s open seven days a week.
I checked it out today. Spent about 90 minutes at the curving wooden bench with the tables, and found the bench to be quite comfortable (unlike at PDX.) The round tables are sturdy and heavy but it looks like they can be moved if necessary.
One of the librarians told me that for the opening they've stuffed the shelves with books that aren't normally coded for the NW Branch so it's a good time to go in and browse.
The clerestory windows and skylights provide lots of lights, so on this sunny day the "blue" color scheme was working well (as it will in the summer, I believe.) I voted for the orange one btw.
Now we just need that park