This week, with spring arriving in earnest, I have been doing a lot of walking in my neighbourhood.

On Wednesday, I had city council piped into one ear as they worked through the convoluted process of repealing blanket rezoning. Here and there I pulled out my notebook and jotted down a few notes. Good Sprawlcast fodder for later.

But the best part of my “walking office” is the side discoveries made along the way.

At the northeast corner of Centre Street and 12 St. N.E., there is a dentist office. As I pass by, I imagine what it used to be: the Crescent Heights branch of the Calgary Public Library.

With its streamline moderne design, it was originally built as a late-night hamburger joint that, in 1939, opened to much fanfare. It was called Puckett’s Dine & Dance.

“This ultimate in dining and entertainment palaces has set an example for the world to aim at,” waxed The Albertan on December 23, 1939. “Nothing in Hollywood is smarter. It is the latest in designing and service and the Puckett motto is ‘Dine while you dance.’”

Puckett’s Dine & Dance was the ninth location of White Spot, a Calgary hamburger chain started by George Puckett in 1929. This was a separate operation from the White Spot chain that Nat Bailey started in British Columbia in 1928 (which, until recent years, had a couple locations in Calgary).

Unlike the restaurants of Nat Bailey—who, in the 1950s, bought the Vancouver Mounties Triple-A baseball team—Alberta’s White Spot restaurants had no Pirate Paks to speak of. But they did have a baseball team in the 1930s!

Despite all the hype, Puckett’s Dine & Dance was short-lived. It closed in 1942. The Calgary Public Library took it over in 1943, thanks in large part to Crescent Heights librarian Sada Kitely, who saw how the local branch was overcrowded.  

The library had deep roots in Crescent Heights. In 1913, only a year after the 1912 opening of the Central Park library (now known as Memorial Park), the Crescent Heights branch opened.

It was well used and by the 1940s, locals felt a real sense of ownership of the Crescent Heights library. “It belongs to the district,” wrote Kitely in the Calgary Herald in 1943.

This was during World War II.

“This community sense is an important thing, this opportunity to belong and to share,” wrote Kitely. “It is the beginning of a feeling of larger responsibility and co-operation which, we believe, must extend to nations as well as individuals and must characterize our world if it is to survive.”

“We hope that our branch library will increasingly become a community centre,” she added.

And so it did.

The Crescent Heights library on Centre Street, with its prominent round sign, served the area for half a century, although the building lost some of its elegance over time. For those in Renfrew, Crescent Heights and Rosedale, it was a library you could walk or bike to.

But in 1993, the library abruptly announced that the branch would be closed due to “structural safety concerns.”

Locals fought the closure. What they described in 1993 echoed the aspirations for the branch that Kitely articulated in 1943, when it opened at that corner.

“Our branch library is much more than a mere book repository,” wrote Gus Barron to the Herald. “It has no parking space to speak of and that's all right; people walk to it. It's not much to look at, but it is warm inside—warm with friendship.”

One Renfrew resident, Shirley Hall, described how she had planted flowers outside the library as a gesture of appreciation.

“Sure there are larger branches, but I find Nora, Jane, Mary and Nancy each treat us as family—even recognizing my voice on the phone,” Hall wrote to the Herald. “In our large city this is worth a great deal.”

“My boys and I walk or ride our bikes to the library,” added Hall. No longer. “My 10-year-old could finally go alone but alternate libraries are too far for him to walk or bike—he has to use the public transportation—so now there's a cost involved.”

In 1994 the library announced that the branch would remain closed permanently. It would have cost up to $640,000 (in 1993 dollars) to fix the roof. And the library system had a lot more ground to cover than it did in the 1940s.

According to the Herald, library board chair Bill Severson said “the branch needed to be closed as part of an over-all scheme 'to provide equitable access to all Calgarians.'”

City Councillor Bev Longstaff let fly on the library board. “They’ve completely ignored the community and they’ve completely ignored whatever input I gave them,” she told the Herald. 

But what was done was done. The branch has remained closed for more than three decades now.

As I walk around the neighbourhood I wonder: Is it too late for a campaign to bring back the Crescent Heights library in some form?

I find myself getting agitated about all this but then remember that the building started as a private venture, not a library.

Today it is a dentist office. The Ng family bought the building after the library closed and has been serving the area for over 30 years now.

Inside their office, a painting of the old library—rescued from a dumpster and cleaned up by Crescent Heights resident John McDermid—hangs on the wall, a reminder of what was there for half a century.

When I get back to my desk after my wanderings, I look at my list of upcoming stories for The Sprawl and see it as a growing thing, with all kinds of new shoots coming up. I wonder how, in January, I was completely frozen and at a loss on what to cover.

This little library side quest reminds me of something Kate Bowler wrote in the Globe & Mail last weekend. “Joy lives on the detours,” she wrote. “It lives in the places where we let ourselves be interrupted, where we choose delight over duty...”

Speaking of joy... and books... now that spring is here, it’s almost time to roll out The Sprawl’s Pop-Up Press, which has been stowed away for the winter. 

The first excursion will be on Saturday, April 25, from 11 to 1 p.m., outside Shelf Life Books for Canadian Independent Bookstore Day. Mark your calendars!

Jeremy Klaszus is founder and editor of The Sprawl. Special thanks to Alan Zakrison for unearthing the historic photos of the Crescent Heights library.