“I personally love a loud library,” Siobhan Reardon, president of the Free Library, told me over the happy din of Logan’s birthday party. On November 10, the newly renovated and reopened library celebrated its centennial with a boisterous birthday bash featuring cake, balloon animals, dancing, music, and poetry. It currently serves a neighborhood where the overwhelming majority of children are black, and more than 30 percent of the population lives in poverty, which is slightly higher than the city’s already high average. Logan Library is a familiar Carnegie library, a proud neoclassical brick building that has stood for 100 years at the intersection of Wagner Avenue and Old York Road. Waki Perry, 14, and Branch Manager Lynne Haase talk in Logan Library’s children’s room. Since Logan Library reopened last year after a $7.2 million overhaul, it quickly gained popularity with teens who say they appreciate a supportive neighborhood space to be themselves.

For young people, libraries are also the rare social space where spending power isn’t a requirement for spending time. It is a space that models tolerance, patience, and sharing among strangers - all helpful in negotiating city life. But consider how revolutionary a proposition that is for teenagers, who need healthy doses of freedom in a world otherwise constantly telling them where to be and what to do. That’s the profound promise of public libraries, to welcome anyone and everyone. “She treats everyone right, no matter who you are.” “Miss Lynne is the best,” Perry adds, referring to Lynne Haase, Logan’s head librarian. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor

Logan township library