Thursday, October 1, 2026
Although their efforts aren’t visible, construction workers are hard at work on the $1.49 million Bayville Library renovation project, which began on Jan. 3 and is expected to be completed by September. Behind boarded windows in the building next door, where the village’s Water Department and two Boy Scout rooms once were, a new 930-square-foot meeting room is in the works.
The library and the adjacent building are connected in an L shape, though there has never been any interior access between them.
The Water Department and scouts will remain in the other building, but will be moved south, toward School Street, during Phase Two of the project.
Deeded in the 1920s to the Village of Bayville from the estate of Harrison Williams, a wealthy stock market speculator, the two buildings and Village Hall were once his carriage house, garage and stables. According to the library website, the village invited the library to move in in 1956. The building was expanded in 1971 to include a south wing, and in 1983 a north wing was added as well.
The first phase of the project involves taking down a wall in the children’s room, an expansion into the north wing, which hasn’t happened yet. This will allow access to the new meeting room. And in the new hallway leading to it, two handicapped-accessible restrooms are being added.
The construction schedule has been delayed because when the walls separating the Water Department from the scout rooms were taken down and the space was gutted, there were several unexpected discoveries. “The work has turned up things that needed done,” Tom Tini, a member of the Renovation Committee, said. “The supports were ignored under the floor, where there’s a crawl space which is hard to access. The holdup is definitely due to structural problems.”
Additionally, pillars were in disrepair. The building had not been maintained, library Director Ashley Birbal said. “The crawl space was being held up by one 2-by-4,” she said. “There was a safety issue. We had to get recommendations from a structural engineer to add more support beams.”
The coronavirus pandemic has meant delayed deliveries of materials across the country, and the library had to wait 14 weeks for ductwork to be done. “All you need is a truck or boat held up to throw the schedule off,” Tini lamented.
The meeting room is needed, Katie Schlicht, a Renovation Committee member, explained, because the library’s programs have always been popular. Space is limited, and the facility has been unable to hold several programs simultaneously.
“We had to open the library up an hour early when we offered a yoga class, because there were so many people that wanted to take the class,” said another committee member, Judy Wohrle.
“And that’s just yoga,” Tini added. “We’ve had dozens of programs that we had to turn away because we just don’t have the space,”
Wohrle said the library would like to add programs in the afternoon, clubs and opportunities for tutoring, which would be possible with the new meeting room.
There will be other changes, too. The library will be painted, and there will be new carpeting and furniture. The children’s room will be relocated to where the adult-services room is now, in the south wing. And a lounge will be added outside the children’s room, so parents can watch their children while taking part in library events.
The young adult area, also in the south wing, will be expanded. A couch is being added, as well as a television, to encourage socializing.
Adult services, where patrons will have access to the hallway leading to the new meeting room, will offer additional seating areas, to encourage people to visit the library and stay, Schlicht said.
And work stations will be added.
The community treasures the library, Tini said. “People come to the library during storms to charge their cellphones and exchange information about what’s going on at their home,” he said. “We provide a tremendous community service. I think they want to see us continue to grow.”
Because the building has historical significance, Schlicht said, the renovations are being done with care. Funding for the project came from Sarah Sperandei, the wife of former Trustee Lawrence Sperandei, who was passionate about the library. Lawrence died in 2006, and Sarah, who was known as Serena, died in 2017.
“His wish was always to break through that wall in the children’s room and go into the Water Department,” Wohrle said. “We are fulfilling that wish now.”
