Exterior upgrades in line for Downtown Public Library
By Cameron Montemayor
St. Joseph’s 122-year-old Downtown Public Library will see a long awaited facelift thanks to a local grant aimed at improving historic streetscapes.
City council members approved an agreement with GKW Group, LLC, at its last meeting to provide $61,980 worth of masonry repairs to the historic building at 927 Felix Street.
Opened in 1902, the Downtown library is now one of several structures along the Felix Street corridor to receive such a grant as part of the city’s River Bluff Gateway Project which began in 2023.
“When the River Bluff Gateway Project grants came up, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to improve the façade of the downtown library,” said Mary Beth Revels, director of the St. Joseph Public Library. “We wanted to make sure that any repairs that were done to it were done correctly.”
Grant funds will be used to improve the short stone wall facing Felix Street. The wall has seen significant deterioration, with large sections of stone breaking apart and paint peeling off.
“It’s the first thing you see when you’re looking at the building and it has really bothered me that that wall is incomplete,” Revels said. “You can tell that it has been stripped of paint … There’s some mortar work that needs to be done on it.”
Last year, the city was awarded a $2.5 million Community Revitalization grant from the Missouri Department of Economic Development to initiate the River Bluff Gateway Project. Project grants are aimed at four key areas of the city: Southside centered on King Hill Avenue, the Sixth Street Corridor, Downtown and the Northside, focused on St. Joseph Avenue.
The project moves forward a long awaited goal of repairing the front wall after the library purchased the building from the St. Joseph School District in 2022 when it relocated its administrative offices to the former Noyes Elementary School building at 1415 N. 26th Street.
“I would just like to thank the City Council for continuing with this River Bluff Gateway project to make improvements in the downtown area,” Revels said. “It’s not just the Downtown area, it’s the corridor. But I’m very happy to be part of that corridor and to be a recipient.”
