Sisters Library building to be named

Martin and Carolyn Winch of Bend have made a $25,000 pledge to help with the restoration of the original Sisters Library building. They asked that the building be named the Maida Bailey Old Library Building.

On Thursday, August 10, the Sisters City Council held a workshop to discuss naming the original 1939 Sisters Library building. The consensus was to craft a motion to formally name the building as requested.

Maida Bailey worked in the Stanford University Library (1905-12), starting as order clerk, then in reference, then as head of reference, while pursuing graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley.

She organized the library at Reed College and became its first librarian (1912-1918).

Bailey moved to Sisters in 1918 after marrying Meredith Bailey, whom she met in Portland. He had come from Philadelphia to Portland. In 1914 he bought a ranch at the western edge of Sisters (today's Patterson Ranch) to fulfill his dream of becoming a sheep rancher. Meredith died in 1931, but Maida kept the ranch and lived on it until her death in 1972.

She served as trustee of Oregon State Library (early 1930s-1956); Reed College, Resident Advisor to Women (1936-38) and first Dean of Women (1937-1942).

She was a bookkeeper, working in the mill office for the Sisters lumber mill from 1943-56 under the ownership of Hitchcock (1938-50), Dant & Russell (1950-53), and Lundgren (1953-63).

Bailey was a member of Sisters Library Board (1920s-1950s), along with Grace Aitken, Alice Scott and Tillie Wilson.

In 1938 a Sisters women's organization, the Sisters Civic Club, determined that the town needed a library. Up to that point, books were borrowed from the Deschutes County Library, using a local retail store as the pick-up/drop-off point.

The club raised funds for the building by holding cakewalks, card parties and raffling handmade quilts. The men of the town donated labor and building materials.

The old Sisters library building was built on West Cascade Avenue in 1939 with these raised funds and donated materials. On January 31, 1939, the Sisters Library became an official branch of the Deschutes County Library.

The original building was 280 square feet with shelving for 1,000 books. In 1963, the library board and the Friends of the Library decided they needed more space. Local mill owner Leonard Lundgren donated an old office building. The office building was attached to the back of the library building, again using donated funds, labor and materials. Bailey was instrumental in the Lundgren donation of the mill office.

This addition doubled the library's size. In 1990, the building was moved to its present location at 151 Spruce St.

Jean Nave, volunteer executive director of the Sisters Country Historical Society and Cheryl Mills, Sisters Area Chamber director, presented an artist's rendering of a proposed remodel to the building. Currently, the chamber and the historical society are part of a group of organizations that will be renting the two buildings vacated by the Sisters Library when the new library opened in December 2005.

Sisters Country Historical Society, an all volunteer organization, is hoping to begin remodeling work soon after Labor Day. Doug Hull, of Hull's Construction in Sisters, has volunteered his time in supervising the project. The society is looking for others to help with the project.

For more information call 549-8755.