FOR SALE: an old, moldy building that held Emporia State’s archives. $250,000 already spent in renovations.

FOR SALE: an old, moldy building that held Emporia State’s archives. $250,000 already spent in renovations. Tuck-pointing needed. Leaky rock foundation. Water intrusion leads to mold. A bargain for the right buyer. No serious offer declined.

That’s how a classified ad might read for the historic Anderson Library, 1220 C of E Dr., which for the better part of the last decade has housed ESU’s archives. And while the archives are safe from mold and other threats for now, the fate of the Anderson Library is less certain.

“There’s a lot of issues with the building,” said Mark Runge, director of university facilities. “We got to the point here a few years ago where we basically could not do what we needed to do to properly fix the building and at that point we requested to sell the building, receive permission from the legislature to sell the building.”

The Kansas Legislature approved a bill to put the building on the market in March 2007 and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed the bill a month later. Ray Hauke, vice president administration and fiscal affairs, said that because of the downturn in the housing and real estate market, there hasn’t really been much activity on it, except for a few potential buyers who have approached the university about the property.

“People notice it, it stands out, it’s a historic site,” Hauke said. “We’ve been contacted, asked if we would be interested in selling it. As you might imagine, the bureaucracy to sell a state building is considerable… you always get into a kind of a chicken and egg thing because somebody says ‘Well, would you be interested in selling this?’ ‘Well, we’ve got to ask the legislature, we’ve got to do three independent appraisals, we’ve got to blah, blah, blah’… and the interest wanes.”

Hauke said that the state is looking at buildings that could be sold and that the Anderson Library is one of those buildings. Kansas House Bill 2014 requires the Secretary of Administration to prepare a report to the legislature detailing a priority listing for sale of state land, but that provision is still under negotiation.

Runge acknowledged the potential difficulty of finding a buyer since the building requires renovations and maintenance.

“We’ve done some estimates there’s a considerable amount of money needed to stabilize the foundation and make it waterproof and there’s a lot of tuck-pointing – concrete or mortar is usually good for about 50-75 years and then it just starts deteriorating and tuck-pointing is redoing new mortar…   hopefully someone that either can just live without the basement can come in and use it.”

Runge estimates that the university spent $250,000 to fix the Anderson Library in the last six years, on things like the new heating system, roofs, gutters, pointing, maintaining and dehumidifiers.

“We checked the roofs first,” Runge said. “The upper roof is copper. We had a roofing contractor come in and take a look at it. We’re pretty much convinced we’re having problems around the tuck-pointing and windows, plus we have a rock foundation. Part of it is designed to catch the water from the walls.”

The replacement value for the building as of fall 2010 was about $2.5 million while the conditional value, which can range from 0-100, was a 38.

“Thirty-eight is into the area where you should knock the building down,” Runge said. “We don’t want to knock the building down, though.”

In addition to the mold and water intrusion, mice were written about in emails that were given to The Bulletin in response to an Open Records request. In September 2010, Michelle Franklin, reading room supervisor, wrote that they had caught six mice that week.

In October 2009, Franklin wrote to Heather Wade, university archivist:

“We have visitors in the ceiling… running all over from where Shari’s desk used to be over through the old reading room… they are very active and quite unsettling…”

In response, Wade wrote:

“If they don’t drown in the rafter or die of mold poisoning, does that mean that we’ll be OK??? ”

SIDEBAR: Building Recommendations

In January 2007, Randy Silverman, the preservation librarian for the University of Utah’s Marriott Library, created a Preservation Planning Study for ESU’s Archives and Special Collections. Silverman’s recommendations for the Archives and Special Collections and the Anderson Memorial Library included:

● Constructing a custom-designed, environmentally controlled, Archival Storage Vault. If the Archival Storage Vault were positioned next to the Anderson Memorial Library, this important historical structure could be renovated (repoint stone masonry; plaster and paint interior walls; provide adequate parking and handicapped access) and continue to serve as a reading room.

● Install a fire suppression system and after-hours motion detection system in Anderson Memorial Library

● Excavate around the base of the Anderson Memorial Library and add French drains to eliminate basement leaking

● Repoint the Anderson Memorial Library’s stone masonry

● Repair cracked plaster in the interior of the Anderson Memorial Library

● Install a lightning rod system on Anderson Memorial Library

● Improve building-level security precautions in William Allen White Library Special Collections and Anderson Memorial Library

● Reduce the UV levels near exhibit case in Anderson Memorial Library with the use of window blinds

SIDEBAR: History of the Building

Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate of Pittsburgh, constructed the building in honor of Col. John B. Anderson, who had mentored Carnegie at the Penn Central Railroad. Two years after Anderson’s death in 1899, Carnegie offered to erect a statue in honor of Anderson. But Anderson’s widow requested that Carnegie construct a building on the College of Emporia’s campus, where one library that contained 600 of Anderson’s books already stood.

The grant from Carnegie was the first he made to an institution of higher learning in the country and the first for a Carnegie library to be built in Kansas.

After the College of Emporia closed in 1974, the campus was purchased by The Way International, a “worldwide, nondenominational Biblical research, teaching, and fellowship ministry headquartered in rural Ohio,” according to its website. The library was re-dedicated in 1986 and in 1987, it was placed on the national register for historic places.

When The Way College closed, the Anderson Library was purchased by Earl Sauder and Joe Cannon and gifted to Emporia State in the 1990s. Initially, there was some debate about what to do with the building, but it was ultimately decided that it should hold archives under the Glennen administration around 1995, Hauke said.

According to Emporia State’s website, some festivities for President Lane’s inauguration were held in the building in 2007.

Kelsey Ryan

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