Best Cultural/Worship and Award of Merit Excellence in Sustainability: Brooklyn Public Library, Adams Street Library
The Adams Street branch is the first new library built in Brooklyn since 1983 and the first branch constructed in the DUMBO neighborhood—the result of dozens of meetings with community members aimed at providing new resources for the area and fostering civic literacy.
Located under the Manhattan Bridge, the facility has more than 650,000 sq ft of library and program space housed on the renovated ground floor of the former E.W. Bliss Machine Works building, which was built in 1901. The design of the renovation—completed on schedule in nine months—aimed to blend both past and future by exposing traces of historic brick and timber underneath modern infrastructure.