The Windsor Terrace Library is checking itself out.
Brooklyn Public Library has taken its E. Fifth Street branch offline for at least a month while it installs a so-called “green roof.”
Much like a regular roof, a green roof provides shade and shelter, but is also covered with shrubbery, along with hardy varieties of grass and heather.
All that foliage will cut down on bills by keeping the one-story building cool in the day and warm in the evening, according to the library.
It is also supposed to provide a home for wildlife, such as birds and bees, although likely not the book-reading squirrel featured in renderings of the new library roof, which, unfortunately, do not exist in nature.
Brooklyn Public Library had been planning to replace the Windsor Terrace branch’s canopy with a standard roof design, but was able to upgrade the renovations with more foliage thanks to $250,000 provided by taxpayers through Councilman Brad Lander (D–Windsor Terrace).
To accommodate borrowers through the closure, the library is setting up its Bookmobile — that’s a truck with books on it — outside, which will be open on Wednesdays and Fridays from 11 am–4 pm beginning March 15.
The literary repository is schedule to reopen sometime in mid April — although work on the roof will continue through the summer — but the library system doesn’t has a bad track record of long delays for such things. In previous years, both the Fort Hamilton and Park Slope branches were closed for three years to accommodate renovations that were expected to conclude after 18 months.
