City’s newest Little Free Library installed
Five free libraries now exist in the city
A new opportunity to freely exchange books has sprung up near the Asbury Park train station.
The city saw its fifth Little Free Library installed this month on a grassy patch of the station’s south bound side, giving passers-by the chance to grab a book as they hop on a train or leave a book for someone else to enjoy.
A Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone can stop and select a book to take and read or drop off books to share. The idea behind the movement is to promote literacy and build a sense of community.
Within the first few days of its installation, Asbury Park resident Anita Weiner [shown above, wearing pink] had to refill the library twice, mostly with children’s books, she said.
“It’s great — that’s what it’s here for,” she said, “for people to take books and read them, and then to return them or keep them, or perhaps put a new book in in exchange for the book they took.”
Weiner has championed the Little Free Library movement in Asbury Park, an idea she got from fellow resident Janet Torsney who runs the Bradley Beach Library and has had several of the same type of mini book exchanges installed in the borough.
Patricia Arroyo, 48, an artist with the Arts Coalition of Asbury Park [ArtsCAP] painted the library with historic Asbury Park themes from the Palace Amusements and Carousel House.
Arroyo grew up in Belmar and has a studio in Wall Township. She said her father took her on trips to Asbury Park when she was a baby and that the city has inspired her art since she first started to paint. Her work shows periodically in the Heaven & Art gallery and antique store on Cookman Avenue, she said.
One of her first paintings, finished in 1996, was of the city’s old Palace Amusements building.
“It just started growing from there,” she said.
It took her about a month of painting four to five hours a day to complete. The iconic Tillie funhouse face from the Palace building appears on the front.
“Tillie himself is representation of a time that has passed, and a time that people can remember as a lot of fun,” she said.
Arroyo has also lent her efforts to help construct a life-size replica of The Palace Amusements facade at the entry of Camp Evans Base of Terror, a near mile-long haunted amusement “journey” at the 100-year-old Army Base in Wall Township.
“The old Asbury Park themes — I don’t think they will ever die with me,” she said.
Another one of the city’s Little Free libraries, hand-built and painted by resident Brian Watkins, takes its inspiration from the old Palace building. It is located on the northeast corner where Cookman and Grand avenues intersect.
The city’s remaining three Little Free Libraries are located outside of the Springwood Center at 1201 Springwood Avenue, at the southwest corner of the Second Avenue Pavilion outside of Langosta Lounge on Ocean Avenue, and in front of the Boys & Girls Club on Monroe Avenue.
Book donations are always welcome and can be dropped off at words! bookstore in Asbury Park, located at 612 Cookman Avenue.
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