STEVENS MEMORIAL LIBRARY
I.
Simply finishing the hour-long car ride from University of Rochester’s campus to Attica, NY for the first time feels like quite the accomplishment. But it’s only once we arrive that our work truly begins. Our car pulls into the lot of the Stevens Memorial Library, a medium-sized white building with signs asking us to slow down as they’ve moved the book drop to the back. Another sign informs us that story hour takes place at 10:30 on Tuesday mornings. The front entrance by the road is guarded by two stone lions, the same lions featured on the sign. As we enter through the back entrance by the parking lot, we’re greeted by a festive display of gourds and mums in the corner by the door. It matches the newly brisk October air.
We enter up a few stairs to the circulation desk. On our left is a set of several computers. An older man is seated at one and looks up at us as we walk in. The librarian is helping a guest, so we wait patiently and poke around the many brochures advertising local goings-on. There are pamphlets for Writers and Books, a Rochester-based organization, sitting in a prominent place on the desk, surprising given the distance from their office. The walls inside are dark blue and the space smells like some kind of construction has recently taken place. The librarian asks how she can help us and we explain that we’re University of Rochester students studying towns with prisons in or near them and that we’ve heard that the library has a collection of materials on local Attica history.
She smiles at us and leads us to the reading room, a glass walled space tucked away from the rest of the library. She shows us the shelf with materials about the prison, pulls down a book, and hands it to us. She says we’re welcome to read any of the materials at the tables just outside the reading room, but that none of the materials from this room are to leave the library. The librarian apologizes for the state of the room which has a cart full of folding chairs and other carts covered in unshelved books and miscellaneous technology. She explains that their recent renovations mean that things are still in transition. We tell her the new space looks beautiful. She smiles and seems proud of it.
We spend the next hour and a half poking around the one floor-to-ceiling shelf of materials, some about Attica specifically and others about New York State history. Only one Attica resident poked her head in as we were working to see what we were up to. She was an older woman and announced that she just wanted to check out the reading room and that it looks like it’s still being put together. She leaves without more conversation.
On our way out, we stop at the circulation desk again. When we inform one librarian that we’re from University of Rochester, the head librarian’s ears perk up and she says, “Oh, you’re those students!” She tells us that if we ever need to come in before they open at noon, we should just give them a call and they’ll be happy to help us out.
I ask two of the librarians, “What’s your favorite thing about living in Attica?” Both smirk at the question, politely, but in a way that feels as though it means, “there’s not much here.” One answers that Attica’s tiny and the other adds that everyone knows everyone else. The first goes on to add, “there’s no Tim Hortons, or Dunkin Donuts. We used to have a Burger King, but we don’t even have that anymore. We’re just so thankful for Tops. There was a while when we didn’t have anything here.” We ask what people do when there’s no grocery store around, to which they reply that folks go to other towns around Attica to find food.
We ask if everyone in Attica has a car in order to make that journey. One librarian immediately answers yes, but the other corrects her. She adds that not everyone has cars; some older folks have their licenses taken away and some people can’t afford them. The librarian adds that she likes how they look out for one another and their kids. She says this has pros and cons. She likes knowing that her kids can’t get away with anything. She tells them, “Everyone knows you. They know you belong to me, and they know I work here.” As we leave, the computers by the door are being used by four or five kids playing computer games.
II.
We decide to start our next research visit in the library and are greeted by a librarian our group had not met during our last visit. She takes us back to the room to make sure that it's open and we run into one librarian we know. She seems pleased to see us. The new librarian goes to turn the lights on and tells our librarian, "The kids are here for the prison." To which our librarian addresses us when she says, "I know, I saw you in the parking lot." She smiles at us and leaves us to the materials on the shelves. The room has not changed much, except for a new cart or two of storage and a few more framed maps that have appeared by the fireplace on the wall opposite the bookshelf.
I page through an annual report by the New York Department of Corrections and a volume titled "History of New York State Prisons" which consists of several periodical-type documents released by NY DOCs about the history and programs and goings on of various state facilities, Attica included.
Two of our group members are sitting at the tables outside the reading room. I've stayed inside in order to peruse the shelves. The new librarian approaches them and asks to hear more about the project. I overhear a bit of the conversation from inside the reading room. The new librarian tells us that there are remaining hard feelings in town as there are still people around who have lost someone. One of our group members pushes that point, "Lost someone?" The librarian replies, "A father, a brother, an uncle." To which our group member asks, "In Attica?" "Yes, in the uprising."
III.
I ask the three librarians present if anyone happens to know how Wyoming Correctional Facility got to be in Attica. They look surprised by the question, like they hadn’t really thought about it before. One librarian tells us that the short version of the story is that “no one else wanted it, so we got it.” She isn’t sure of more details than that. Another librarian says she remembers it being built, but doesn’t know how it got to be there. The first librarian remembers seeing a small article about it and says she’ll save it for us if she can find it.
She goes on to tell us that they actually had some of the guys from the prison move all of the books out of the library and then move them all back in during the renovations. She doesn’t specify which prison. “Those poor guys,” she says, shaking her head softly as she returns to the circulation desk.
IV.
There were several holiday raffle baskets set up on a shelf near the circulation desk and I commented that it looked as though something fun was going on. The librarian told me they were participating in Winterfest tomorrow and I remembered what the Vintage Cow owner had told us about a whole-town day with activities and hot dogs and cocoa and realized that tomorrow that day would arrive. The library was excited to be participating.
The space seemed busy; there was an older couple and a young boy using the computers and several other people throughout the library including an older man in the reading room and a second older man reading the newspaper at one of the tables.
I asked one of the librarians if she knew anything about the history of the library itself. She said it used to be the home of a member of the Stevens family, but that the owner had actually died in the house. “Sometimes you can hear her footsteps; it’s really cool.” She was trying to remember the date in the 1800s that the library first transitioned from home to public library and directed me to a book on a separate shelf between the two bathrooms. The book was Attica Then and Now, the same book that one of our group members purchased at the Historical Society. I flipped through the book with the librarian and she showed me the old pictures of the library and how they used to have a whole row of very tiny windows on the front of the building.
I asked about the most recent renovations which she said had taken place last year. I asked what had changed about the building. She said the renovations had given them a porch, a second bathroom, and countless other improvements. I mentioned the previous conversation about prisoner labor, and the librarian informed me that inmates did do a lot of the moving and hauling work during the renovations. I said I assumed there were also construction workers who weren’t inmates and she said yes, the renovations were actually split into two projects – the north and south halves – which were finished by two separate construction companies. The inmates helped out in between, moving all of the books in and out of the space.
I wandered in to the reading room to peruse the local history collection one last time. I happened upon a set of four folders which I didn’t think I’d seen before. They contained a four-part collection of newspaper clippings related to the 1971 riot and I flipped through them. They particularly caught my eye because each clipping was laminated in some kind of hard plastic. I wondered who compiled the collection.
I also noticed a shelf on wheels that was clearly not organized with the rest of the materials, but the books looked particularly old and worn. I picked one up and realized that they were tons of old library ledgers from the Stevens Memorial Library, some dating all the way back to the library’s opening in 1894. I was surprised that they bothered to keep these records, but it made sense – the online newspaper clippings I’d found about the library were all discussions of the circulation information for certain months.
I returned to the two librarians at the desk where they were counting blue raffle tickets off of a roll and folding them into paper-clipped stacks to prepare for Winter Fest. I asked if they could think of any other ways that having the prison right down the street affected the library. One librarian told me that family members of those in the prison used to come by to use the computers or to ask for directions, but she said that now that everyone has cell phones, there isn’t much demand for the library from families of incarcerated people.
She also told me that the library participates in interlibrary loan with the prison. She says inmates can request books from them and then they have to send the books to their office in Canandaigua. From there, the books are checked out to make sure they’re allowed because “they can’t be hardcover or have a CD in them or anything like that.” From there, they get sent to the prison. “They used to go out right through us. I remember seeing the big plastic totes with locks on them,” the librarian informs me.
The other librarian hadn’t heard our earlier conversation and told me for a second time that their crew during the renovations had been from the prison. I asked if it was the same crew every day. They said no, the second time they came back, two of the guys were the same, but the others were all new. She told me they were close to the end of their sentences and were there on good behavior. She also said they were living in some kind of special housing and that she hadn’t known that before. Both librarians said the whole crew had been great, and they seemed really pleased with getting to work with them.
Amazingly, the library never closed a single day during any of the renovations, which lasted about a year. There was plastic up for a while and it took a long time for them to replace the linoleum tiles with the original wood floors, but they never closed. “And people kept coming in that whole time?” “Yeah they did, there’s not much in Attica and the library is kind of a hub in the community.”
I verified that the crew had been from Wyoming Correctional Facility rather than Attica Correctional Facility. They looked a little shocked. “Oh yes, Wyoming. Nothing comes out of Attica.” One librarian told me that the COs in Attica often go crazy. “Because there are a lot of lifers in there, it’s a lot of mind games.” I ask how many of the COs they think are from the town of Attica. She guessed about 75%. She told me, “Attica really is a prison town.” She asked me if I’d heard of Westinghouse and said it closed down recently. She wasn’t sure what kind of industry it was but guessed steel. She told me it used to employ a lot of people, but these days, the prison is the biggest employer. She also told me that someone from Attica made the statue for the Chicago or Ohio zoo. It went down the street on a truck one day and was massive and had a bunch of animals on it. “So we do have some craftspeople here, but largely, it’s the prison.”
