Eden Prairie Library

Eden Prairie Library
General information
Address15226, Scenic Heights Road
Town or cityEden Prairie, MN
Coordinates44°51′16″N 93°28′16″W / 44.854580°N 93.471031°W / 44.854580; -93.471031
Opened2002
The Eden Prairie Library features a barrel-vaulted porte corchere entrance.
The Eden Prairie Library in 2011

The Eden Prairie Library is a public library in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. It is one of 41 libraries of the Hennepin County Library system. The library has 150,000 books and 82 public computers. There are two meeting rooms, a reading lounge with a fireplace, a teen area, and children's area with a Family Reading Lounge. The Eden Prairie Library has the highest number of checkouts in any library, with over 1.165 million.

History

The Eden Prairie Reading Center was housed in a double Quonset hut from 1973 to 1986.
Eden Prairie Library in 1972

The first Eden Prairie library was located in a school. The school library opened in 1924. The school board made a deal with Hennepin County Library to use the school library space. In the 1950s, the school library was too small for the books. The Hennepin County Bookmobile served Eden Prarie until 1972. The first building opened in 1972 with 12,000 items. In 1986 a new building was made on Prairie Center Drive. This new location became the Eden Prairie Community Library, with 47,000 items.

Eden Prairie's population grew from 16,000 in 1980 to 54,000 in 2000. The building started construction in July 2002. Many problems interrupted the construction including water damage and the original builders going bankrupt. The new Eden Prairie Library opened its doors to the public on August 12, 2004.

Poem

The following poem is included as decoration of the library:


To Make a Prairie
by Emily Dickinson
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.


References

  1. ↑ "About the Eden Prairie Library", Hennepin County Library, Hennepin County Library, archived from the original on May 17, 2012, retrieved November 5, 2011
  2. ↑ "HCL Statistics", Hennepin County Library Staff Web, Hennepin County Library, retrieved February 2, 2013{{citation}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  3. ↑ Anderson, Helen Holden (1979), Eden Prairie-The First 100 Years, Eden Prairie, MN: Viking Press, pp. 73–74
  4. ↑ Tubert, Jack (July 11, 1986), "New Eden Prairie Community Library unveiled", Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, p. 7B, ISSN 0895-2825, ProQuest 417698900
  5. ↑ "Community Profile for Eden Prairie", Metropolitan Council, retrieved November 9, 2011

44°51′1″N 93°25′41″W / 44.85028°N 93.42806°W / 44.85028; -93.42806