Around Hartford

At Park and Broad Streets in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood, just north of the Trinity College campus, stands the Park Street Library @ the Lyric, a relatively new location for the largest and one of the most used of Hartford Public Library’s seven branches. The TSKP Studio-designed 13,000-squarefoot, two-story library includes a 150-seat community room, café, courtyard, learning lab, exhibit space, and children’s room, as well as the largest selection of Spanish-language books of any branch in the system. The library’s name is a nod to the Lyric Theater, which occupied the site in the early 20th century. Coincidentally, the original Frog Hollow branch also opened during the same time, in 1928, in a small, rented storefront. The branch moved from its most recent location, a leased space, to its current home in September 2021. Hartford Public Library, which has a stated aim of “democratizing access to information and opportunity” throughout the city’s diverse neighborhoods, celebrates its 250th anniversary this year.