“It feels like the blink of an eye,” David Dodd, the director of library and cultural services for the Benicia Public Library, said of the institution celebrating 25 years at its current East L Street location. Although the library has been in Benicia much longer than 25 years, the current facility— with its bright colors, vaulted ceilings, new technology and overall larger space—  was a big deal when it opened to the public in 1993. To celebrate a quarter-century in its L Street digs, the library is hosting several anniversary events which will all culminate in a birthday bash on June 16.

For its first 63 years, Benicia did not have a library and was even rejected for a $10,000 Carnegie grant in 1903, according to a history published in the Herald in 1993. This changed when a facility opened in a 600-square-foot corner of the Benicia State Capitol in 1910. At the time, the library had two rooms with only 550 books. However, as Benicia’s population grew in the 1940s, the city began looking at a new space. In the 1950s, Edna Clyne— the wife of late Benicia Mayor Charles Clyne— offered to donate a large garden next to her family home on East G Street for a new library. The new location at 144 East G Street opened in 1956 with about 7,000 volumes. The facility consisted of a large room in front, a smaller room in the back and a smaller office off to one side. It continued in this space for the next 37 years.

“It was built as a library but it always felt like a suburban tract home,” Dodd, who served as a reference librarian for the library from 1990 to 1994, said. “(It had) 1950s clearstory windows and slanted ceilings.”

By the 1980s, the growing population of Benicia once again meant that the library was outgrowing its space.

“We had crammed 40,000 volumes in a space meant for 7,000,” Dodd said. “We were having huge crowds at storytimes, and Benicia was growing pretty rapidly.”

Susan Firestein Hildreth, the head librarian from 1984 to 1988, applied for a statewide grant to build a new facility at the corner of East L Street and Eunice Jensen Park. Carol Starr continued the work when she was hired as the library director in 1988. The grant was accepted in 1991, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held on Dec. 29 of that year. The new library opened its doors on June 19, 1993. The East G Street location closed and was converted into a residential house.

Dodd said the modern library had a lot of new features. Chief among these was simply more space, including new community meeting rooms such as the Dona Benicia Room and Edna Clyne Room. There also was space for picture books at the appropriate height level for children.

“Before, we had to go too high because we had to fit more books in,” Dodd said.

Additionally, the new building allowed the library to have computer workstations for the first time. In the early years of the new library, patrons mainly used them for word processing. When the World Wide Web became a popular research tool, the library began providing access to the internet.

Dodd said the library has continued to offer innovative new technologies, including a virtual reality program for teens and 3-D printers.

“They’re not printing presses,” Dodd said, “but they’re sort of the next step in what you can do as an individual to have the power to create something.”

To commemorate 25 years, the library has pulled out all the stops. First, the fountain outside began working again. Then the exterior was repainted in the library’s original colors for the first time in 25 years. Leading up to the 25th anniversary week, there have been numerous author events and free concerts as well as a birthday-themed Family Reading Night. From June 11 to 15, the library will screen family-friendly ‘90s movies in the Dona Benicia Room each day at 3 p.m. Two ‘90s-themed parties will be held for kids and teens respectively at 7 and 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 12. A fundraiser will be hosted by the Friends of the Benicia Library at 5:30 p.m. Friday, June 15 at the former library location at 144 East G St.

All of these events are a buildup to the birthday bash on June 16. Every 30 minutes starting at noon, the library will host “25 Years of Storytimes” in the Dona Benicia Room in which former and current librarians will come to read stories to children. At 1:30, a celebration will take place in the Dona Benicia Room with cake and speeches by such figures as Starr, Mayor Elizabeth Patterson architect Franz Alberts, Marilyn O’Rourke— the mayor when groundbreaking on the library began as well as the namesake of the library’s art gallery, California State Librarian Greg Lucas, and Hildreth, who was later appointed by then-President Barack Obama as the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additionally, Johanna Ely will read a poem she wrote for the occasion in her last official event as poet laureate, and longtime resident Bonnie Silveria will talk about Jensen’s contributions to the library. Dodd’s bluegrass band Coyote will reunite to perform an acoustic set by the library at 4 p.m., an Adult Storytime will be held at 5 and the library will close at 6.

Even at a time when so much information can be found online, Dodd believes the library remains as the “heart of the community.”

“If you want definitive information, news that’s not fake news, if you want to distinguish between what might be real news and what might not be real news, libraries are doing that more and more,” he said. “Being the people who can actually help establish authority and what is real.”

Dodd also said the library is welcoming of all people, regardless of social class or ethnic background, to come in and take part in new technologies and old-fashioned activities like board games or a community jigsaw puzzle that hundreds of people have put together.

“It’s a great place to feel like you’re part of something bigger,” he said.

The library is located at 150 east L St. For more information, visit benicialibrary.org or call 746-4343.