As the Cedar River flows serenely through downtown Renton, it’s a scene out of Venice or Amsterdam: The water has been trained into a straight line, like a planned canal, with at least six bridges spanning it if you include I-405. Most were designed for cars to cross the river, and some allow pedestrians too. But only one of them is engineered for library carts as well.

Constructed in 1966, the Renton Library’s journey to existence was perhaps less plumbed and perfect than this stretch of the Cedar. In fact, it’s got quite a few twists and turns. The story starts in 1903.

At the turn of the century, Renton was a thriving coal-mining town with a population of 1,176. The town was incorporated the following year, and a small book-lending library was put together in 1903 by the Renton Coal Miners Association in a space above the general store. The collection later moved to the second floor of Brendel's Drug Store on Wells Avenue South and South Third Street—a building that's currently the home of Common Ground Coffee. The librarian was Blanche Pritchard Hughes, who received a salary of $35.

In 1907, the Coal Miners Association donated those books to Renton High School, where they lived happily until 1913. But with no more room in the school for the expanding collection, Renton resident Neva Bostwick Douglas applied for steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s fledgling library program. Bostwick Douglas assembled a committee to do this, and in 1913, the Carnegie Corporation provided a grant of $10,000.

Then they had to decide where to put the new library. After months of disagreement among Rentonites, which took so long that the Carnegie grant was nearly rescinded, landowners Ignazio and Jennie Sartori ended the argument when they donated three lots on the edge of northern Renton. The Georgian-style redbrick building opened across the street from the north end of Liberty Park on March 11, 1914. Designed by Harold H. Ginnold, the Carnegie Library had room for 8,000 books. Some folks still thought it was too far away from the center of commerce, and once it was built, a newspaper editorial opined: “Don’t let the thought that you don’t like the location stop you from doing your duty. The library is here, just the same as the Cedar River is here, and it is your duty to make the most of it.”

The Renton City Council gave the library $1,000 to hire staff and cover maintenance, but it didn’t have cash for books, so businesses and citizens contributed around $800 to fill out the empty shelves. Public libraries in Seattle and Tacoma also donated many books for the initial collection.

In fact, it only took until the 1930s for the collection to outgrow its new location. When Renton’s population more than quintupled the following decade, thanks to a new Boeing plant in 1941 and a subsequent wartime boom, the Renton Public Library's book population grew too. An inventory count during the ’40s reported around 68,000 books in a building meant to house just 8,000.

In 1944, the newly formed King County Library System (KCLS) established a second Renton library in the Highlands. The city now had a main library and a branch library. It also had a funding problem. The League of Women Voters and the Greater Renton Chamber of Commerce presented three different bond issues to city voters to fund a replacement for the chockablock Carnegie Library, but they were all defeated over the years, with voters concerned about costs—and yet again conflicted on the library’s proposed location. It would take until late 1964 for a $150,000 bond measure to see the light of day.

According to Renton historian Elizabeth Stewart, the main reason that the bond was at last approved was the unusual location and design proposed in the 1964 draft. Per Stewart’s article, “From Carnegie to the Cedar River,” it was to be built “across the Cedar River, resting on twelve giant columns and the riverbanks themselves,” and would represent a "vision [for] a civic complex on the Cedar River. This vision made all the difference. Renton residents were captivated by the prize-winning design for a new library that would straddle the river, near a new City Hall, senior center, community auditorium, and park grounds.”

Architects Felice “Felix” M. Campanella and David A. Johnston were brought in to design the new library; the duo had gotten their start in supermarkets and had previously teamed up to build the brutalist-modernist St. Alphonsus Church in Ballard in 1960. The new library spanning the river was built by Alton V. Phillips and Company for $327,560, and at 20,000 square feet, it would contain 100,000 volumes. The site is about 700 feet away from the old Carnegie Library, with the east end of the building anchored at the northwest corner of Liberty Park and the west end on the other side of the river, next to Renton Prep School. Book stacks were slated for the side of the building over the river’s western bank, because of their weight, and some of the library’s state-of-the-art features for the era included “a telephone-intercom system, a listening unit in the music department, and waterlights to highlight the river at night.” 

As far as anyone seems to know, Renton’s is the only library in the world that’s built on top of a river, and certainly the only library wherein in the building itself serves as a bridge. There are, of course, bridges elsewhere in the world that incorporate buildings, like the Ponte di Rialto in Venice or the Tower Bridge in London—and formerly London Bridge, which was once crowded with shops. But these examples are all either bridges where in the pilings are the buildings or they’re bridges upon which buildings have later been built, and none of them are libraries.  Renton Library was originally designed, built, and intended to be a library in the shape and function of a bridge.

The new building was named the Renton Public Library, but since its opening in 1966, it has been, understandably, referred to by locals as the Cedar River Library. The year after it opened, the Renton Carnegie Library building was demolished, despite efforts to save the historic building, due to massive repair costs.  

In March of 2010, the King County Library system annexed both the Renton Public and Renton Highlands libraries, whereupon both were bolstered significantly, with a fresh update to the computer network, longer operating hours, and brand-new library furnishings among other added services. 

Following annexation, city officials immediately tried to relocate the Renton Library from its river site to the site of the former Big 5 location in downtown Renton, next to the public Renton Piazza. If Rentonites didn’t like the location of the library at first, they like it now: Residents organized to prevent the relocation and a referendum on the issue appeared on the August 2012 ballot, with the city council asking voters to decide the geographical future of the Renton Public Library. Thankfully, with 76 percent of voters in favor of leaving it as is, the library stayed put.

Between 2012 and 2016, the Renton Library received Governor's Smart Communities Awards, which promote smart growth and planning projects to better serve communities. These awards allowed the King County Library System and the City of Renton to conduct a 15-month renovation of both the exterior and interior, with the help of architectural firm Miller Hull Partnership, which was completed in 2015. In 2016, it also received a Library Building Award from the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Association. It would receive two more architectural awards the following year.

As the Miller Hull website describes it, “Renton Library represents our design approach of regionalism grounded in a specific place.” 

With streamlined midcentury charm, floor-to-ceiling windows, an outdoor balcony on the south side for interactive river-gazing, and a picture-postcard view of the water and the greenways surrounding it, it’s a peaceful respite, an historical marker, and a unique architectural treasure. Didn’t know this was hiding out in Renton, did ya?