The Valatie Free Library is renovating and redesigning a historic freight barn located on Route 9 to serve as the new library facility. Designer David Bienn has begun working with the library on the project. The new 1800 square foot facility will house community meetings, book clubs, computers, and reading areas. It is hoped that the project can be completed within two years, though no construction start date has been set. Bienn has experience retrofitting historic buildings and is designing the new library to be beautiful, functional, and provide access to cultural experiences beyond books.

1. VALATIE FREE LIBRARY
© 2011 photo courtesy Valatie Free Library, all rights reserved
Building Designer, David Bienn stands in front of
the New Valatie Free Library, Route 9, Valatie
Proposed Opening Date: 2014
For Immediate Release:
A Columbia County Library, The Valatie Free Library, part of the Mid-Hudson Library System, is
pleased to announce the renovation and redesign of its recent acquisition, the red-painted,
historic Steam Railroad Freight Barn located at 1036 Kinderhook Street (Route 9). While the
project is currently in the initial creative stage, Building Designer, David Bienn has already
begun work with the Library Director; the Library Board of Directors; and its Building Committee.
It may be premature to announce a proposed opening date, however, all concerned are hopeful
the project can be completed within two years. No date has yet been set to begin construction.
The new facility sits on a half-acre of land, with an interior space triple the size of the current
library on Church Street. At 1800 square feet, the re-purposed barn will comfortably house
Valatie community meetings, book clubs, computer use, as well as study and reading. The new
facility has ample parking and will be handicap-accessible. Originally built in the 1890s on River
Street adjacent to the railroad tracks, the historic Kinderhook and Hudson Railroad Freight Barn
was relocated to the current site some forty years later, during the 1930s.

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The Board of Directors of the Valatie Free Library accepted proposals and interviewed a
number of talented Columbia County and local architects before selecting the designer, David
Bienn.
Bienn has long worked within the space restrictions of city dwellings and workspaces, which
have informed his æsthetic; the designer is adept in the interpretation of common areas for
multiple and harmonic use—essential in the function of a library, considered by many to be the
cultural crown of a community in its encouragement of literacy and the appreciation of literature.
The finished library “will be a sure source of pride and accomplishment, and serve as an
educational anchor point for both kids and adults,” Bienn remarked during a recent meeting.
The designer said he looks forward “to working with the progressive community of Valatie and
their supporters, to make a truly beautiful and functional facility with plugged-in access not just
to books, but a to a whole range of broadening cultural experiences.”
David Bienn was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a graduate of the School of
Architecture at Tulane University. The designer’s inherent sense of style and proportion are a
natural result of his coming of age in that elegant Southern city. Bienn is probably best known
for retro-fitting historic buildings with contemporary and human-scale, functional designs. He
designed the contemporary gallery, Res Nova in a former early-19th-century tobacco warehouse
in the New Orleans warehouse district (the Heriard-Cimino Gallery is current tenant); during a
several-year stint in New York City, he collaborated with the design of the Tribeca, Manhattan
loft-studio of internationally-renowned sculptor Keith Sonnier. Bienn lived for nearly a decade in
St. Petersburg, Russia, after glasnost and the fall of the Soviet Union, working extensively on
the design and implementation of modular housing. Since 2005 Bienn has returned to the USA
to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He has been a visitor to Columbia County
and Valatie / Kinderhook over the past several years, and appreciates the pace of life as well as
the wonderful vistas of rolling farmland.
The Valatie Free Library was chartered in the Village of Valatie—a part of the Town of
Kinderhook, New York—in 1931. The Library serves the Village of Valatie and the surrounding
community in the scenic Hudson River Valley of New York State. Current Valatie library-card
membership is approximately 1700.
Valatie Free Library 3203 Church Street, Valatie, NY 12184-0336
www.valatielibrary.org tel 518.758.9321