From Monticello Lights to Dairy Queen fundraisers, community support has buoyed Delmont library for 90 years

It is not an exaggeration to say the Delmont Public Library has been built by the community it serves. Just ask former director Denni Grassel.

“The Monticello Lights fundraiser donated $7,500 to the (new) library its first year, and we used that to buy the table and chairs in the new conference room,” Grassel said. “The floor in there was paid for through a fundraiser that the Delmont Dairy Queen helped us host. Every part of that library is the community saying, ‘We love you and support you.’ ”

From its humble beginnings as a small building on East Pittsburgh Street in 1934, the Delmont Public Library has called quite a few places home over the years, from churches to houses to the basement of the borough building.

Today, it is housed in a new $1.3 million building on School Street. It will mark its 90th anniversary by inviting the community to a Sept. 7 birthday party.

“It’s been a tough year,” said Mallory Gamblin, who started off operating a tax help site at the library before taking a larger volunteer role and now serving as the library board’s vice president.

Board members, volunteers and staff have all stepped up as director Monica Smodic has been on medical leave after a cancer diagnosis.

“Everyone has pitched in, and we’ve kept things running pretty smoothly,” Gamblin said. “We’ve bought a lot of hardware, including some nice laptops. We’ve modernized pretty much everything, but we still have a nice mix of the old and the new.”

Grassel went from longtime patron to library director in 2007. About five years into her tenure, the Delmont Police Department began looking for a new home due to space issues as well as occasional flooding problems in their former offices. With the library seeking to expand, talks began for the police to remodel the old library, and for the library to begin a capital campaign to build a new space.

After setting an ambitious goal of raising $1.3 million in about 2015, the board of directors broke ground on the new building just four years later, having raised the money through a combination of grants, private donations and fundraisers.

Grassel said getting the word out to the community put them on the right path immediately.

“It’s cliché, but ‘teamwork makes the dream work,’” she said. “The whole community came together and really embraced the project. I think they saw the value of the library, and of increasing literacy in the community.”

The new 4,150-square-foot library, with a solar array on the roof, geothermal heating in the ductwork and several other modern features, opened in January 2021.

Gamblin said the library’s place as a community hub enhances the small-town feel already present in Delmont.

“I’ve lived here for 13 years, and it reminds me so much of growing up in Freeport,” she said. “And it draws people from all over. I wore my Delmont library hat when I volunteered at SummerSounds in Greensburg, and four different people stopped me to tell stories about going to the library and helping their kids with craft projects in the basement. It really reaches a lot of people.”

The 90th birthday party will include face painting, historical displays, refreshments, cake and more. It will be at 11 a.m. at the library, 75 School St. in Delmont.

For more details, see Delmont Library.org.