How Apex Got Its Library: Eva Perry Regional Library Turns 20!
A recent anniversary passed without too much notice, but Eva H. Perry Regional Library in Apex is now 20 years old! That’s rather amazing, considering how modern and popular the library building remains to this day. It is one of only seven regional libraries in Wake County, and was only the fourth regional library when it opened in late January 1996.
But it is even more amazing that this regional library exists in Apex at all. The story of how Apex got its library and beat out its much larger neighbor Cary is full of surprises.
Bookmobiles and Raleigh Libraries
In 1950, Apex had set a new population record — 1,000 residents. But it had no library. This isn’t really surprising, though. When you only have a thousand people, it is easy to informally lend books among your neighbors. Also, Wake County had a bookmobile that started in 1942, and it would make visits all around the county. And for the really adventurous, there was the library in Raleigh. Two of them, in fact: The Olivia Raney library (established in 1901) only served white people, and the Richard B. Harrison library was founded in 1935 for the black community (although they shared the bookmobile). While we know this dual system was plainly and objectively wrong, it was the norm in the South at the time. And it was also probably very inefficient, requiring two libraries and two sets of books to serve the community.
First Apex Public Library: 1957
The Richard B. Harrison library in Raleigh was led by Mollie Huston Lee, the first African-American librarian in Wake County. In the mid-1950s, Ms. Lee was called upon for help by Apex’s black residents. They dreamed of having a real library to replace the more informal library run by Apex resident Docia Evans in her home. Ms. Lee obtained a federal grant of $2,400. On October 24, 1957, Apex’s first official public library opened with 2,500 books on South Salem Street, across from Apex First Baptist Church.
This new library must have presented a dilemma for Apex’s white folks, who were no doubt a bit jealous of the small library just across Williams Street on South Salem. Separate-but-(un)equal didn’t usually work this way. And the town was providing some of the funding for this library.
In 1960, the Apex’s Woman’s Club started their own small library, in a second-floor room of the Apex Pharmacy Building — the building at 100 N. Salem that now houses Anna’s Pizzeria. It had only 250 books to start, just one-tenth that of the “Southside” library, but it was supplemented by the bookmobile as well as books borrowed from the Raney library. As a result, for about five years, Apex had two libraries.
Merger and the search for a permanent location: 1965–1973
In 1965, the Olivia Raney and Richard Harrison libraries announced they would be merging. Around the same time, the Women’s Club library (now up to about 500 books) was failing for lack of volunteer help, and the Apex Town Council announced its intention to open a municipal library for all citizens. The Town also announced it was withdrawing its annual funding for the black library. Library integration was going to happen in Apex, a number of years before school integration.
Between 1965 and 1973, Apex struggled to find a suitable library location. The suggestion was first raised in early 1965 to use the old downtown Seaboard train station depot as a library. This idea was popular, but it turned out that Seaboard said they still needed the building at that time.
When the original Seaboard plan fell through, the town quickly rented a small building on the campus of Apex United Methodist Church on S. Hughes Street for $55 a month. But the town’s black citizens strongly opposed the location, as it was in a white area two blocks off Salem Street, which could strongly discourage its use by the black community. Fifty to 75 black residents showed up to protest the location at a meeting where only five representatives of the black community had been expected. They asked for a more neutral location on Salem Street. But the town had already entered into a year-long lease, and repairs and improvements to the building were well underway.
After these strong objections, the proposed AUMC location was rejected. A library board now including black citizens was appointed, and all parties, with the help of the now-merged Raney library, agreed to a location at the vacated Apex Paint store at 131 N. Salem St. in downtown.
So, 131 N. Salem became the first official branch of the Raney library outside Raleigh, with Rachel Lewter serving as the head librarian (Lewter would remain the town’s librarian until her retirement in 1986). The “Apex Community Library” opened at 3pm on Monday, January 10, 1966. It was open 20 hours a week: 3–6pm Monday to Friday, 7–9pm on Thursday evenings, and 10am-1pm on Saturdays. The offerings included the 2,500 books of the former black library, combined with the smaller collection of the Woman’s library.
The news articles below provide more detail of the controversy and eventual opening
The picture of some “first customers” in the below January 13, 1966 story in the Apex News Herald includes Warren and Toby Holleman. In 1973 the Hollemans would publish the definitive book of Apex’s early history, Pluck, Perseverance, and Paint: Apex, North Carolina, Beginnings to 1941. (They updated and expanded that book greatly a few years ago — you can find both versions at Eva Perry library!)
The library apparently jumped around to more than one location in the late 1960s, as it appears to have moved to 127 N. Salem St. (the former R.C. Sears general store) at one point. None of the locations used during this time were considered ideal or permanent.
A Conversation
While the town fretted over the problem of finding a suitable library location that everyone could be happy with in the 1960s, local Apex residents Otha and Eva Perry talked about it, as no doubt everyone did in the town. The Perrys moved to Apex from Durham in the 1930s, and done well for themselves, eventually owning over 300 acres of land, mostly used for farming or land speculation. They did not have any children. Otha remarked to Eva one day that if she happened to outlive him, perhaps she should give something to the town to help with a library. Eva did outlive Otha (who died in 1968), but no one at the time knew about the couple’s talks about the library situation.
The Depot
Eventually, in 1969, the railroad finally consented to turning over the old depot to the Town. The 1914 building needed a great deal of work, and many volunteers contributed their time and money to turn the depot into a library.
On May 13, 1973 the Apex Community Library officially opened at the depot. At last, in the Town’s 100th year, Apex had a permanent library that could adequately serve everyone. The 1973 centennial book celebrating Apex’s first 100 years included a full page on the library:
An unexpected Christmas gift
By 1985, Apex had grown a fair amount. It now had a population of 3,710 (a sizable jump from the 2,192 residents it had in 1970 and 2,847 in 1980). It was now dwarfed, however, by neighboring Cary, with a population of 35,520. Cary had grown a whopping 63% in the past five years.
(For comparison purposes: Apex’s estimated population for July 1, 2014 was 43,907; Cary was at 155,227.)
The Apex Community Library was also starting to outgrow its confines, but there was little to do about it. There was simply no more space. Books were shoved into every nook and cranny. If every book in circulation was somehow returned at once, there would be a crisis.
Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve 1985, Eva Perry died at age 94 at a nursing home in Fuquay-Varina. Though she had outlived Otha by 17 years, she had remembered their conversation about helping the Town with its library.
The next month, Eva’s relatives and the entire town of Apex were shocked to learn that she had left almost all of her fortune to the Town — with the stipulation that it must be used for a library.
Folks were mystified. Friends and relatives didn’t remember Eva and Otha having many books in their house or being avid readers. One niece, however, recalled Eva talking about her conversation with Otha about helping the library. Eva said that conversation with her husband had come back to her mind again one day when she was fishing at the pond behind her house. All of Eva Perry’s friends and relatives agreed that when Eva got something into her mind, she rarely changed it.
The donation was a big enough story that even the Associated Press wrote about it. As an example of Eva Perry’s modest nature, the AP reported that in the 1970s, after selling over $1 million in land to CP&L for the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, she finally decided to buy herself a TV. When told to buy a color set, she replied “Oh, I would never pay enough to buy a color television, a black-and-white is fine for me.” Eva’s relatives were a bit mortified by this amusing story, and claimed in response that she just couldn’t see colors well.
Location, location, location
In 1985, all the libraries in Wake County were being merged into a county-wide system. The first “regional library” — a new concept for Wake County meaning a large full-service library — was just opening in Cameron Village, and the library system wanted to expand the concept with regional libraries around the county.
Eva Perry’s holdings were originally estimated to be worth about one million dollars, but were soon realized to top three million. That was a huge amount of money, but it could only be used for a library in the town limits of Apex.
There’s no question that Cary would have won out in the battle for a new regional library over Apex, except for Eva’s gift.
Yet, there were still negotiations to be done. A regional library needed to be located near good roads, and going too far away from Cary could cause their ten-times-larger neighbor to fight them. And Apex was not yet even served by a four-lane highway. But US 64 was slated for widening in the 1990s, and the first parts of the Shepherd’s Vineyard subdivision had recently been annexed into Apex.
Though the number of possible locations that would work for a library were clearly limited, the town and county kept their negotiations under close wraps until it was announced in May 1987 that a 5.6 acre tract along US 64 in Shepherd’s Vineyard had been purchased by the Town for $500,000, and would be the site of a major new regional library.
Building a library: 1987–1996
Once the library site was announced in May 1987, it took almost nine more years to get it opened.
The first and biggest problem was that Eva Perry’s land, though valuable, was taking time to sell. The Town was not in the regular business of selling real estate. It made improvements to Perry Road (where much of the Perrys’ land was situated) to spur sales, but things were still going slowly. In August 1991 the town engaged a broker to help market the property, and the property started to sell.
The town also sparred with the NC Department of Transportation (NCDOT), who was planning the future widening of US 64. NCDOT did not intend to put a median break at Shepherd’s Vineyard Drive because they were planning a light at Lake Pine Drive. The town feared this would damage their “showcase” library location. Also, at this point, Lake Pine Drive did not exist south of US 64 (though the town wanted NCDOT to extend it to Old Raleigh Rd), so Shepherd’s Vineyard Drive was going to be the only US 64 access to the library. However, NCDOT relented and did agree to the full median opening. In later years, this crossing would turn out to be just as dangerous as they feared.
In the meantime, as Eva Perry land sales were increasing, the library became a hot button issue in both the 1991 and 1993 town elections. Some candidates did not like the location, wanting to find a spot closer to downtown, even suggesting that that is what Eva Perry wanted (a surprising claim since no one even knew about her generous bequest or interest in a library until after her death). An anonymous flyer which boldly stated “You are about to lose your library” was circulated around town in 1993.
But the group who favored the original agreed-upon 1987 location prevailed. In 1993, as the original 1987 agreement with Wake County over the library plans had expired, a new agreement was negotiated which also granted Apex the right to name the library. The contract was for 25 years, and allowed Wake County to lease the library for $1 per year.
What had been slated to be called the “Southwest Regional Library” was renamed the “Eva H. Perry Regional Library.” Notably, it is the only regional library in Wake County to be named after a person (though both Olivia Raney and Richard Harrison have branch libraries today in their names).
With the bulk of Eva Perry’s land sold by late 1993, architect Louis Cherry, who had done previous sketches, was hired to plan the library. A 22,500 square foot plan to house up to 200,000 books was decided on — many times bigger than the depot location.
An official groundbreaking for the new library was held on October 3, 1994. Then-Town Manager Bill Sutton commented on the long road taken to get there: “Getting to this place has been real, and has been fun — but it has not been real fun.”
Construction of the library proceeded, though some delays were encountered; for weather, construction, and at the very end, to finish a mural by local artist Deborah Haeffele. This pushed back the opening into January 1996. The total project cost was about $4 million, with about $3 million coming from the Eva Perry estate, and $1 million from Wake County for books and computers.
Meanwhile, on December 29, 1995, the library at the depot finally closed after 22 years of service. The library staff reminisced about the quirks of the building — that sometimes books would fall from the shelves when trains passed; and when both a train passed and the fire station next door was sounding an alarm, one would question whether you were in a library at all. Rachel Lewter, the town’s librarian from 1966–1986, came back for a final visit and recalled that the first card catalog at the depot was kept in a shoebox.
Patrons were encouraged to check out as many books as possible and return them the next month to Eva Perry. One librarian said, “It looks like we’re having a blue-light special.” (Today the depot is the home of the Apex Chamber of Commerce.)
Finally
On Monday, January 22, 1996, Eva H. Perry Regional Library opened its doors to the public. An official ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on February 5. Since its opening, and to this day, patrons are greeted by a portrait of Eva Perry at the entrance.
The new library was an immediate success. Over 7,500 books were checked out on the first day, and over 30,000 in the first week — more books than the old depot library could even hold. The new automated checkout machines were also a big help — one terminal alone was used to check out 1,700 books on the first day.
Eva Perry remains a vibrant and popular facility to this day, even though three more regional libraries have since opened in Wake County. And in 1998, it was named the busiest public library in all of North Carolina.
And that is the story of how Apex went from having an occasional bookmobile visit to becoming home to one of the busiest libraries in the state. It is a great resource for our community, and one that we have many many people to thank for. So next time you’re at the library, say hi to Eva, and enjoy!
