The Town of Vienna’s future library will bear a name with close ties to its past.
Fairfax County Public Library’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved “Vienna-Carter” as the new name for Patrick Henry Library at its meeting on Wednesday (Feb. 14). The name change will officially take effect once the library reopens after an expansion project that’s expected to start later this year and finish in fall 2026.
The vote inspired applause at the back of the George Mason Regional Library meeting room where the board convened. Among those clapping were Hoyt and Dee Dee Carter, a grandson and cousin, respectively, of Patrick Henry Library’s new namesakes, William and Lillian Carter.
“I’m very thrilled,” Dee Dee Carter said after the meeting adjourned. “I’m elated because it was unanimous. Nobody did a pushback, and I’m glad they’re in favor of it.”
Aware of the upcoming renovation, the Carters, who still live in Vienna, proposed last year that Patrick Henry Library be renamed after their family, who were instrumental in getting Fairfax County to integrate the facility when it launched in 1962.
Before Patrick Henry was established, Vienna’s only library was a one-room building on Maple Avenue that only served white residents. One day in the 1950s, the Vienna Library Association’s board of trustees even came to the Carters’ home and took back books that a white woman had checked out for their children, including Hoyt Carter’s father.
That incident spurred the Carters to start an informal “Friends of the Library” group in 1958 that met in their living room, according to a family story recounted in Christopher Barbuschak and Suzanne LaPierre’s book “Desegregation in Northern Virginia Libraries.”
With an interracial membership that included Kenton Kilmer, the son of poet Joyce Kilmer, the friends’ group successfully desegregated Vienna’s library, overcoming the opposition of the library association’s president to revise its charter to allow all patrons regardless of race.
Dee Dee Carter says one of her cousins, Sharon Honesty, was one of the first African American patrons to use Patrick Henry when it opened in Vienna’s Maple Avenue Shopping Center in 1962. The library moved to its current site at 101 Maple Avenue East in 1971.
“We were talking about Blacks being able to go in and use the library and use books from the library, so I feel that it’s a wonder to have this now happen,” Hoyt Carter said of Patrick Henry getting renamed after his grandparents.
Though the vote was unanimous, some board members reported getting questions and emails asking why the name change was being considered.
While the renaming wasn’t subject to a public hearing, FCPL Director Jessica Hudson said community members had several opportunities to weigh in at board meetings, including before the board approved an update to its facility naming policy last November.
The change had gotten the support of Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn and some Vienna Town Council members, though the council didn’t take an official stance, according to FCPL Board Chair Brian Engler.
Dee Dee Carter told FFXnow that she hasn’t heard anyone object to the new name, which was initially proposed to be “Carter-Vienna.” FCPL’s policy requires library names to reference their geographical location, and the board ultimately decided that the location should go first.
Suzanne Levy, the board’s vice chair and Fairfax City representative, expressed hope that the renaming will draw attention to the library system’s history.
“We’re not hiding what the county used to do,” she said. “It opens discussion and shows that we’re moving forward.”
A new look could come with a new name for Patrick Henry Library.
With a major renovation on the horizon, the Fairfax County Public Library’s board of trustees is set to vote next Wednesday (Feb. 14) on whether to rename the Vienna facility after William and Lillian Carter, who co-founded the nonprofit friends’ group that has supported the library for over half a century.
Living members of the Carter family requested the name change last year as a recognition of their ancestors’ efforts to ensure Patrick Henry would be integrated when it launched in 1962, according to Library Board Chair and Braddock District Trustee Brian Engler.
“Mr. Carter was a founding member of the nonprofit Friends of the Library group in Vienna, which advocated for a County library facility within the Town to serve all residents,” Engler told FFXnow. “At that time, library services were only available to white residents. After receiving the inquiry, the Library Board first reviewed its policies regarding facility naming conventions and is now at a point where it can have full board discussion on the request.”
The request came to the board of trustees on Sept. 13, 2023, prompting a re-consideration of FCPL’s policy for naming facilities, according to the board packet for next week’s meeting, which will take place at 7 p.m. at George Mason Regional Library (7001 Little River Turnpike) in Annandale.
Previously updated in 2020, the existing policy permitted renaming proposals from residents of a library’s service area “if the benefits of the name change outweigh the costs such a name change could generate.” However, the new name had to reflect the library’s geographic location.
The board approved a revision on Nov. 8 that added the option for libraries to “also include the name of a group or individual, living or deceased, who has made a significant contribution” to FCPL as a whole or to that individual branch. A reference to the branch’s location must still be included.
As a result, FCPL staff are recommending that Patrick Henry be renamed the “Carter-Vienna Library” after it’s rebuilt.
Vienna’s first public library operated out of a one-room building at 101 Maple Avenue East from 1897 to 1962. Spurred by the advocacy of the Friends of Vienna Library group that the Carters helped found, Fairfax County started Patrick Henry Library as a shopping center storefront before its current building opened in 1971.
The original library was relocated to 164 Mill Street NE in 1969 and has been preserved as a museum run by Historic Vienna Inc.
Last renovated in 1995, the Patrick Henry Library building is now nearing the end of its usable life, according to FCPL. The planned overhaul will pair an approximately 18,000-square-foot, one-story library with a 209-space, three-level parking garage partially funded by the Town of Vienna.
According to the board’s Feb. 14 agenda, county staff currently anticipate construction on the project to begin this fall or winter, putting the new library on track to open in fall 2026.
“The County has additionally committed to opening a temporary library space within the Town of Vienna to continue providing resident services during the demolition and construction period,” FCPL staff wrote.
Given its eventual demolition, staff recommended that Patrick Henry Library’s name change, if approved, not take effect until the new building opens.
(Updated at 3:05 p.m.) The anticipated cost of renovating Patrick Henry Library has escalated in recent years, leading Fairfax County to seek a bigger contribution from the Town of Vienna.
The Vienna Town Council agreed on Monday (Dec. 4) to raise the town’s cap on funding for the new library’s construction to approximately $4.7 million — a $590,000 increase from the previous maximum set in 2020.
Under the existing joint development agreement, the town committed to paying up to $4.2 million or 19% of the total construction costs, along with 30% of the design costs. The project will replace the 13,817-square-foot community library at 101 Maple Avenue East with a bigger facility and a new parking garage.
The remainder of the funds will come from Fairfax County. However, an updated cost estimate completed in September found that the price of materials, labor, fuel and other factors has gone up, a trend affecting all of the county’s capital improvement projects, county staff recently told the town.
“The higher costs are attributable to the market escalation for material costs including supply chain issues, and continuing shortages in skilled labor,” Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services spokesperson Sharon North told FFXnow by email.
North says more specifics about the county’s cost estimates can be shared “in the next few days” after DPWES updates county leaders on the town council’s decision.
In an email summarized by town staff, DPWES project manager Maryam Mostamandi told Vienna officials that the county’s cost estimators believe costs could continue escalating “at least through the end of 2025.”
“However, they have also cautioned that the market remains volatile, and they are finding it difficult to predict costs for the future,” she wrote.
She said plans for “aggressive” sustainability goals — including solar panels and all-electric building systems to achieve net-zero carbon emissions — have also contributed to the rising cost of the Patrick Henry project.
Those initiatives don’t affect the town’s share, which covers the 84 spaces it has been allocated in the four-level parking garage, Vienna Director of Finance Marion Serfass told the council. She said it “may not be practical” to eliminate a floor of the garage to lower costs, a suggestion evidently floated by council members in an earlier closed session.
“That would cut our number of spaces dramatically,” Serfass said. “…It would cut 68 spaces out, so we probably would not have enough garage spaces to get anything from [the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority] or to receive the grant we have agreed to, because NVTA wants to see something for their money.”
Though construction bids aren’t expected to go out until next fall, this was the last opportunity for Vienna to back out of the joint agreement. If the town took that “off-ramp,” it could’ve gotten back $331,500, or 50% of what it paid for the project’s design, according to staff.
Instead, the council unanimously voted to move forward with the project, which has been in the works since a feasibility study started in 2018.
“I hope construction costs come down, but it’ll give us the parking we need and improve the vibrancy of Vienna,” Councilmember Howard Springsteen said.
Councilmember Chuck Anderson agreed that the library is important to the community but warned county officials in the room, including Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn, not to expect any additional increases to the financial cap.
According to town staff, the county gave “verbal assurances that there will be no more requests for cost increases.”
“I think we deserve the best possible library, and if there are overruns, we’ve kind of already paid for it through our regular property taxes to the county of Fairfax,” Anderson said.
Vienna residents can get a look at their library’s past and future next week at a book talk that will double as a reveal of the planned design for the new facility.
Design plans for the upcoming Patrick Henry Library renovation will be unveiled to the public for the first time at a “Liberty and Libraries” event at the Vienna Community Center (120 Cherry Street SE) on Wednesday, June 28, according to the event page.
Fairfax County Public Library Director Jessica Hudson and a member of the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services’ Capital Improvement Program (CIP) team will be in attendance.
In addition to the design unveiling, the event will feature a talk by local librarians Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne LaPierre about their book “Desegregation in Northern Virginia Libraries,” which delves into the racist practices deployed by FCPL and other public library systems when they emerged in the 1930s and the subsequent fight to integrate them.
“The [authors] will speak about the major civil rights activists who successfully desegregated local public libraries during the Jim Crow era,” the event page says. “The talk will highlight parts of the story that include the Vienna community and the establishment of the Patrick Henry Library.”
Set to run from 6:30-8 p.m., the event is free, but registration is encouraged.
“Liberty and Libraries” is part of Vienna’s Liberty Amendments Month festivities, which kicked off on Saturday (June 17) with a Juneteenth Celebration. Dubbed “Library Week,” the week of June 25 to July 1 will focus on the 14th Amendment that granted citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in the U.S., overturning the Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to Black people.
While this will be the first public presentation of the new Patrick Henry Library designs, earlier concepts were reviewed by the Vienna Town Council last year.
The county has proposed replacing the existing 13,817-square-foot community library at 101 Maple Avenue East with a roughly 18,000-square-foot facility accompanied by a parking garage. Planned features of the new library include a larger children’s section, technology upgrades and an outdoor plaza.
When presented with a concept last summer, the council feared the garage will dwarf the actual library, questioning whether a garage level could be moved underground or a second story could be added to the library to allow more open space on the 1.4-acre lot.
A more detailed concept presented in September appeared to allay those concerns, revising the parking garage from four levels to three with an open top deck featuring solar panels. The garage will have 209 spaces: 125 dedicated to the library and 84 available to the Town of Vienna for general use.
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An initial concept for the upcoming Patrick Henry Library renovation is here, and the Vienna Town Council has some reservations.
At a Town Council conference session on Monday (June 13), Fairfax County public works staff unveiled a conceptual site plan for a one-story library and a four-level parking garage to replace the existing facility and parking lot at 101 Maple Avenue East.
The county hopes to expand the community library from 13,817 square feet to about 18,000 square feet — smaller than the previously expected 21,000 square feet — to accommodate its programming plans, including a larger children’s section and upgraded technology.
The project will also add a public parking garage to the 1.4-acre site. The current concept provides 216 spaces, including seven accessible spots and five with electric vehicle charging stations — more than the 209 spaces required by the county’s agreement with the Town of Vienna.
With an access road planned from Maple Avenue and a driveway to the garage from Center Street, the two structures will essentially take up every available inch of space.
“The site is quite constrained in size for the uses proposed,” Vienna Planning and Zoning Director David Levy said. “Parking garages in particular have minimum dimensions related to turning radii and efficient layouts. As a result, there’s not really many options for the concept design.”
The limited space will make it difficult to meet Vienna’s tree canopy requirements, which may have to be waived, Levy told the council.
The concept provides open space in the form of a plaza at the corner of Maple and Center. A rooftop terrace to provide outdoor reading and classroom space has been considered, but it would be “cost-prohibitive” to include initially, according to county staff.
Though staff said the setback from Maple Avenue will be slightly increased, council members urged the design team led by the firm RRMM Architects to find ways to use less space and reduce the height of the garage. Read More
