COMING IN 2025

Our community’s needs are changing, and the Jesup must grow to meet them.

Our library has served many generations since it was built in 1911. It’s time to update this well-loved institution to serve generations to come. Our expansion will modernize the library’s spaces, programs and resources while preserving our historic building for the next 100 years.

The Jesup will maintain its regular hours and remain open to the public throughout the entire expansion project.

Your vision for Bar Harbor’s future

Input collected through numerous public planning sessions will be central to our final design, particularly its youth spaces, archives, technology, and sustainability. The expanded library will offer urgently needed improvements including:

• accessible, step-free access to all areas of the library
• bright and sunlit children’s and young adult spaces
• 120-person auditorium
• five private/semi-private conference spaces for group study, remote working, video calls, and tutoring
• instructional, classroom style meeting room
• environmentally-friendly mechanical systems
• climate controlled archives for historic and special collections
• makerspace

Mass Timber at the Jesup

The Jesup expansion uses cross-laminated timber (“CLT”), a green building product made of sustainably harvested soft wood that it is nailed, glued or doweled together to make sheets similar to plywood. This new building material will save 37% on the carbon footprint of the building. Even better, it represents a new market for Maine softwood timber, such as hemlock. This project is the first in Maine to use local CLT, and the first library in the Northeast to be built with CLT. Thanks to funding from the Northern Boarder Regional Commission and the United States Department of Agriculture, the Jesup expansion stands as a groundbreaking example of what the future of libraries and the future of building practices can look like.

Through an exciting partnership with the University of New Hampshire and several federal grants from the Northern Border Regional Commission, USDA, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Jesup expansion is pioneering the use of locally sourced eastern hemlock CLT—the first of its kind in Maine. This project will serve as a model to promote this innovative building technique to industry stakeholders, while also expanding the market for CLT and New England-sourced eastern hemlock across the nation."

Learn more about mass timber