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Editor's note: Mayor John Whitmire has reversed the library's decision and said the Montrose branch will remain open permanently.
The Montrose branch of the Houston Public Library is closing, effective immediately, according to an email the library’s Executive Director Rhea Lawson sent to the system’s entire staff Wednesday afternoon.
The move comes one day after the Abdelraoufsinno published a story detailing the decline of the branch, known as the Eleanor Freed Library.
“After careful consideration and assessment of the various challenges, we have concluded that it is in the best interest and safety to cease operations effective immediately,” Lawson wrote in the Wednesday email.
The Montrose branch was still open as of Wednesday afternoon. An employee who answered the phone said the branch’s final day will be Thursday. The book drop will be available through April 4 for returning borrowed materials, the Library posted on its Instagram page.
“I want to emphasize that this decision was not made lightly,” Lawson’s email continues. “In addition to logistical challenges, the building’s condition made it taxing for the Montrose team to navigate daily responsibilities.”
The Houston Public Library has been aware of the building’s shortcomings for years. In the city’s capital improvement plan for 2014-2017, the library justified a proposed renovation by noting that the branch’s facilities were “tied with three other locations for second-worst neighborhood library.”
Six years later, as the capital plan moved away from what would be the building’s first renovation since 1988 in favor of replacing it with a new location, the project justification noted that “the building currently does not meet the standards of our most modern libraries.”
In 2021, City Council approved $4.6 million to build a new location near the corner of Montrose Boulevard and Westheimer Road. But as the plans for this new location were delayed — pushing back prospective opening dates from 2022, to 2023, and now 2024 — the current branch continued to deteriorate.
“This decision is due to ongoing safety and facility issues that cannot be resolved in a timely manner,” the library’s communications team wrote in a statement released Wednesday evening. “Among the workplace safety concerns, the elevator's non-functionality renders the second floor inaccessible to the public, as it does not comply with ADA accessibility standards.”
These concerns are not new.
This January, an employee emailed her bosses just two minutes before the branch was set to open for the day. “The Freed Montrose library is without phone and internet service and also our elevator is out and also it is very cold in the building,” she wrote. The email was obtained by the Landing via a public records request.
At the same time, the branch’s attendance and circulation have both dropped starkly. While library attendance across the city dipped by 36 percent between 2018 and 2023, the Montrose branch saw a 66 percent slowdown. At the same time, circulation has dropped by 53 percent at Eleanor Freed, while remaining relatively steady across the Houston Public Library system as a whole.
At the Freed branch, the employee answering phones said there are plans to post a note on the door, letting library patrons know Thursday will be its last day. Mary Benton, communications director for Mayor John Whitmire, said Thursday evening that the “mayor’s office has been in contact with (the library) regarding the closure and future plans.”
Closing the library is likely to trigger a clause that will result in the city losing its claim to the property. In November, University of St. Thomas’s chief legal counsel, Gita Bolt, sent a letter to the city of Houston’s legal department offering $1.25 million to buy the building.
In the letter, Bolt pointed out a stipulation made by the land’s original donor when it was gifted to the city in 1986: If at any point the property is not used as a public library for more than 30 days, it is set “to revert to the University of St. Thomas to continue to be used to educate the community, which is UST’s ultimate goal,” the letter states.
When asked whether the branch’s closure will change the university’s plans to attempt to purchase the property from the city, university spokesman Christopher Zeglin declined to comment.
Construction at the library’s new location is behind schedule. After the Landing’s story published on Tuesday, the library updated its website to show that construction would begin in the first quarter of 2024.
Previously, the timeline had indicated that construction began in September, which the developer of Montrose Collective, Steve Radom, told the Landing was not actually the case.
“It’s shovel ready,” Radom told the Landing earlier this month. “We just have to get the shovel in the ground.”
He added, “I will tell you this: The delays are not as a result of the space not being ready or the city not having the legal title to the library.”
The library’s statement issued Wednesday evening said that construction has begun.
“Construction is already underway for the new Freed-Montrose Neighborhood Library, which will be in the Montrose Collective mixed-use shopping center,” the statement read.
The updated timeline lists the third quarter of this year — between July and September — as the completion date.
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