The Hopkinton Town Library took another big step in the restoration process after a lightning strike in August started a fire in the building’s cupola, damaging much of the building’s interior and materials below.
The roof atop the cupola was removed Tuesday and cut apart into pieces as charred bits of shingles were tossed into a dumpster parked outside the building.
While the library continues to work on restoring its materials, furniture and structure, it has also completed work that will make the building use energy more efficiently.
Energy Efficient Investments, a company based in Merrimack, has completed its work tightening the building’s “envelope” to increase energy efficiency. It will also work on insulating the ceiling beneath the cupola, which was not there before the fire. While the fire has forced the library to be closed for nearly half a year, library director Donna Dunlop said. said this aspect of the project provides a silver lining.
“Being able to take on projects like this post-lightning strike was one of the great benefits of our situation,” Dunlop said.
Bergeron Construction Company of Keene is taking on the restoration project after being chosen by the library’s board of trustees in a bidding process in early November. Dunlop said the roof and windows in the cupola are being replaced.
The library’s full reopening date is still up in the air. Dunlop hopes to open the doors sometime in the spring, but there is still a lot of work to be done on the building, as well as restoring furniture and materials damaged by smoke and water in the August fire.
The community room, which has been hosting library programs, reopened in October. Dunlop said the rest of the library will reopen when all of the work is complete.
“We are hoping to open the building when the project is completely finished, preferring not to do it piecemeal,” Dunlop wrote in an email Tuesday. “Opening the community room was a different story; we were committed to doing that as a service to the community and so that we could get back to planning some library programming.”
Since August, the library’s staff has been working in a mini-library on the lower level of the Slusser Senior Center since, which sits adjacent to the library. It has a limited selection of books and materials from the library’s original collection, but Hopkinton library cards are still being honored at libraries in several surrounding communities, including Concord, Dunbarton, Henniker, New England College, Hillsborough, Warner, Weare and Webster.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321 or nstoico@cmonitor.com.)