Western Reserve Historical Society Library to Reopen April 3, 17 Months After Fire

The Western Reserve Historical Society in 2019. Its library is set to reopen April 3, a year-and-a-half after a basement fire caused $25 million in damage and necessary repairs. Credit: Google

After a year-and-a-half of duct work, restoring HVAC, replacing shelves and cleaning 129 boxes of irreplaceable books, the Western Reserve Historical Society Library is set to reopen to visitors on April 3.

On September 28, 2023, around seven in the morning, a fire broke out in the library’s basement, causing heat and water damage and marring thousands of books. A Cleveland Fire investigation determined the fire was caused by spilled hydraulic oil in the elevator room.

Seventeen months of repairs, of moving and cleaning books page-by-page, has totaled at least $25 million so far, President Kelly Falcone-Hall told Scene. (They had “more than adequate insurance,” she said.)

“Imagine the process of cleaning every page of every book,” she said. “Cleaning, deodorizing, re-boxing, re-labeling—literally millions of items.”

“And we didn’t lose one item,” she added. “Not one item was lost.”

Shortly after the fire, WRHS hired, Belfor Property Restoration and The Conservation Center, to quickly relocate those 129 boxes of items off-site, where they would remain for months as basement ducts and nearby shelving were restored.

Staff that moved to temporary office space on the second floor of the Crawford Auto Museum moved back to their previous space at WRHS in November, Falcone-Hall said.

Before the fire, WRHS attracts hundreds of academics, researchers, students and journalists per year who seek out rare texts, genealogical research and expert input. Falcone-Hall said that number dropped to the “dozens” over 17 months of meetings outside of the library.

The library’s newly opened doors are a part of a decent spring for the museum overall.

Just last week, WRHS scored a prized accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums. Only four percent of the country’s 33,000 museums have received this type of recognition, AAM’s website shows.

That, and the end to a worrisome saga, has given Falcone-Hall a renewed gratefulness in the museum’s public worth.

“We experienced an event, it was a disaster for us, but we didn’t lose anything,” she said. “And thank God no one got hurt.”