WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:07.440 If you ever want to see what a city remembers, 2 00:00:07.719 --> 00:00:11.240 spend a morning in its library after closing hours. I 3 00:00:11.279 --> 00:00:15.240 always loved those silent pre dawn times, before the heating 4 00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:19.120 clanks awake, before the morning salt air stiffens the old 5 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:22.079 floor boards and the gulls begin their racket out on 6 00:00:22.120 --> 00:00:25.640 the bluff. Even after I retired from my post as 7 00:00:25.679 --> 00:00:29.239 head archivist, I kept the habit of returning, although now 8 00:00:29.239 --> 00:00:32.719 it's usually under the guise of expert nuisance, called back 9 00:00:32.759 --> 00:00:35.520 for a trickier research request or to train a new 10 00:00:35.600 --> 00:00:39.399 staff through a collection deep dive. I suppose I've become 11 00:00:39.439 --> 00:00:42.479 a kind of routine myself, as much as the smelling 12 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:45.399 salts kept at the front desk or the changing of 13 00:00:45.439 --> 00:00:49.799 the weatherings on the copper gutter outside. This particular morning, 14 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:53.359 I was summoned by Marina, our newest staff member, and 15 00:00:53.399 --> 00:00:57.600 by her own nervous declaration, terrified to break anything historical, 16 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:01.000 she wanted blueprints for the committee handling the next batch 17 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:05.680 of renovations, the usual parade of scaffolding firms, preservationists, and 18 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:10.319 city inspectors. The council wanted assurances that any new HVAC 19 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:14.680 upgrades would respect the building's historical profile. I didn't mind. 20 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:18.200 There are few things I adore more than rolling out 21 00:01:18.319 --> 00:01:22.239 yellowed paper and arguing about vents among the ghosts of 22 00:01:22.359 --> 00:01:28.040 old architecture. Down in the archives, it's always the same, dry, cool, 23 00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:32.760 and faintly cinnamon scented with desicate packets. The light is greenish, 24 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:36.760 filtered through glass too thick for any modern code. Marina 25 00:01:36.879 --> 00:01:40.560 hovered beside the rolling stacks, hair jammed in a tight knot, 26 00:01:40.760 --> 00:01:43.719 a clipboard in hands so new that the company logo 27 00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:48.760 sticker still half flaked its edge. There she announced, pulling 28 00:01:48.799 --> 00:01:52.120 with some effort at a heavy portfolio marked nineteen fifty seven, 29 00:01:52.599 --> 00:01:56.519 the year of the infamous Starling's incident. As the marginalia 30 00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:59.439 in the staff ledgers would have it, the old plans 31 00:01:59.439 --> 00:02:03.200 were taped in an envelope, brittle but legible, each labeled 32 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:07.760 in heavy clerical black ink. Ground floor first floor attic 33 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:11.639 roof detail. I spread them out on the workspace. The 34 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:16.280 familiar pattern emerged, reading room staff offices, the octagonal front 35 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:19.280 lobby with its fussy little cloisters pretending to be alcoves. 36 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:23.960 On another sheet was scrawled second floor periodical study carols. 37 00:02:24.159 --> 00:02:28.240 The expected geography then as if slipped between worlds a blueprint. 38 00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:31.479 I'd never seen a plan titled in neat blue ink 39 00:02:31.520 --> 00:02:35.280 block letters. Third floor, reading room and rare book fault. 40 00:02:36.319 --> 00:02:39.000 I will confess, for a half second my sense of 41 00:02:39.039 --> 00:02:43.439 orientation flickered. The third floor was arranged with precision, showing 42 00:02:43.439 --> 00:02:46.479 a great hall capped by a dome, a gallery stacks, 43 00:02:46.639 --> 00:02:49.879 north section, and most strange of all, a shaded chamber 44 00:02:49.960 --> 00:02:54.439 labeled three R staff only. Storage. Light sources were marked 45 00:02:54.879 --> 00:02:59.120 skylight dome arrows pointing in from compass drue angles. Even 46 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:01.919 the stairwells and fire exits were laid out with start 47 00:03:01.960 --> 00:03:06.039 to finish functionality. The space span not a crawl space 48 00:03:06.120 --> 00:03:11.240 or atticsworth, but nearly the entire roof footprint. Is this real, 49 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:15.479 Marina asked, leaning close. I mean, does this mean it 50 00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:19.879 existed or just that someone wanted it to? I straightened, 51 00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:23.080 mouth dry. I'd haunted every inch of this building for 52 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:27.479 forty years. We had two floors. There was no secret staircase, 53 00:03:27.719 --> 00:03:30.879 no dumbwaiter to a hidden gallery, and certainly no lost 54 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:34.639 rare book vault, unless someone had absurdly managed to compress 55 00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:37.120 such a space into the rickety attic, which I had 56 00:03:37.159 --> 00:03:42.599 personally cataloged last November. The roof line was unmistakable, both 57 00:03:42.599 --> 00:03:46.840 in reality and in the city's countless tourist brochures, steep, 58 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:50.680 sharp edged, and unpunctuated by any signs of a dome 59 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:54.759 or additional floor. I compared the plan to the existing 60 00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:59.000 modern evacuation map on the wall, just too stately, slightly 61 00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:03.319 mismatched story under an unbroken pitch roof. If the third 62 00:04:03.319 --> 00:04:06.479 floor reading room had ever existed, it should have bulged 63 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:10.280 obviously into the skyline. There was nowhere for it to hide. 64 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:14.960 Probably a proposed expansion that never happened. I said the 65 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.639 words ringing false before they were out. Odd though, how 66 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:21.759 detailed it is, and it signed off by the city's stamp. 67 00:04:22.879 --> 00:04:27.120 Marine appeared at the blueprint's brow creasing. It's so thorough, 68 00:04:27.439 --> 00:04:30.600 all the wiring fire escapes. Why draw it for something 69 00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:34.399 you never built? I watched her absently snapping a photo 70 00:04:34.439 --> 00:04:37.399 with her phone before returning the blueprints to the envelope. 71 00:04:37.959 --> 00:04:41.920 Except for the third floor, I hesitated, then quietly slid 72 00:04:41.959 --> 00:04:45.199 it into my own folder. Maybe it was simply misfiled, 73 00:04:45.399 --> 00:04:48.720 an old architectural dream, But something about the care in 74 00:04:48.759 --> 00:04:52.160 those lines, how the dome was cross hatched, the sequence 75 00:04:52.199 --> 00:04:56.839 of doors and shelving meticulously measured, gnawed quietly at my certainty. 76 00:04:57.879 --> 00:05:00.800 I said nothing to the others, none of them the committee, 77 00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:04.839 not even Kershaw, our fastidious director. In all the time 78 00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:07.959 I'd worked here, the floor had never appeared in record 79 00:05:08.079 --> 00:05:11.639 or rumor. Absurd as it was, I couldn't help but 80 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:14.199 feel as if I had glimpsed a memory not my own, 81 00:05:14.519 --> 00:05:17.079 flickering somewhere at the edge of what the building was 82 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:20.639 willing to show. I left the basement with the blueprint 83 00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:24.600 pressed to my side, head buzzing with a polite, insistent dissonance. 84 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:27.519 Whatever the answer I needed, at least to place this 85 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:31.639 oddity in context. I have always preferred explanation, even when 86 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:35.279 it leaves the world smaller. Yet, standing in the empty corridor, 87 00:05:35.519 --> 00:05:38.920 blueprint hidden beneath my coat, I felt the rules shifting, 88 00:05:39.319 --> 00:05:43.079 wonder creeping in alongside reason, each step up from the basement, 89 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:46.199 somehow shadowed by a space that, by every rule should 90 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:49.720 not exist. I suppose this is where I should explain 91 00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:52.439 who I am and why. If the City Library were 92 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:55.199 hiding a staircase in plain sight for half a century, 93 00:05:55.480 --> 00:05:58.040 I would have been the first to know. My name 94 00:05:58.120 --> 00:06:04.319 is Arthur Sinclair, retired archivist, sometime consultant, sometime volunteer, marked 95 00:06:04.319 --> 00:06:07.720 by years tending the endless flotsam of history that drifts 96 00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:11.480 into a town's only public library. My hands know every 97 00:06:11.560 --> 00:06:15.000 knot in the handrills, every echoing creek on the second floor. 98 00:06:16.040 --> 00:06:19.720 For most of my life I cataloged each donation, mapped 99 00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:23.759 forgotten passageways, and led raucous school children through the hollow 100 00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:27.199 bone work of our old red brick behemoth. A structure, 101 00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:32.319 half museum, half social club, entirely itself. The building is 102 00:06:32.319 --> 00:06:36.040 a civic eccentricity, famed for its bluff top silhouette and 103 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:39.160 the flame colored brick that leans just so over the sea. 104 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.000 Designed in eighteen eighty eight with more ambition than money, 105 00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:46.120 it sits awkward on the map, a little farther out 106 00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:49.079 from Main Street than sense would advise, as if the 107 00:06:49.199 --> 00:06:52.759 architects intended each patron to approach through a blast of 108 00:06:52.839 --> 00:06:57.560 brine soaked wind. Apart from the minor amusements and repairs 109 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:01.600 of the century electricity in the nineteen twenties, the sturdy 110 00:07:01.639 --> 00:07:04.759 but ungainly addition of a lift shaft in the sixties, 111 00:07:05.079 --> 00:07:08.360 and a series of ignoble paint choices in the late nineties. 112 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:13.000 The outside has hardly changed. Any major alteration would be 113 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:18.800 front page news. Inside routine shapes every week on Mondays, 114 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:22.600 the staff trudges through meetings in the administrative office, walled 115 00:07:22.639 --> 00:07:26.439 by stacks of half sorted donations and half faded event posters, 116 00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:31.399 each more optimistic than its predecessor. The circulation desk, where 117 00:07:31.399 --> 00:07:35.120 missus Tomer, queen of the checkout counter and gentle tyrant 118 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:38.920 of the book drop, surveys. Her domain never changes except 119 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:43.360 for the accumulation of mismatched mugs. The public floors are 120 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:46.560 regular in the way that only deeply irregular buildings can be. 121 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:52.639 Walls adrift by an inch here, a settling stair treads there. Marina, 122 00:07:52.759 --> 00:07:55.240 our nervous new Hire, is the sort who keeps the 123 00:07:55.240 --> 00:07:58.759 stamp pads clean and double checks the font on returned slips. 124 00:07:59.279 --> 00:08:01.879 Her nervousness is acid enough in a place whose greatest 125 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.040 enemy is in attention. She wants to be thorough, and 126 00:08:05.079 --> 00:08:08.160 more importantly, she wants the work to matter. It's a 127 00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:11.759 nice contrast to mister Kershaw, whose idea of a spirited 128 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:15.360 conversation about library history is a stern lecture on the 129 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:21.959 difference between restoration and conservation. Missus Tomer has outlasted five directors. 130 00:08:22.360 --> 00:08:26.639 She manages heartbreak, overdue fines and city council memos with 131 00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:29.920 airy good humor, and can recount the small disasters of 132 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:34.320 every decade. The library also attracts an assortment of chronic patrons, 133 00:08:34.759 --> 00:08:39.039 students who treat fluorescent study carols as hibernation, dends, old 134 00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:42.919 timers who confuse the newspapers by re arranging them, Writers 135 00:08:42.919 --> 00:08:46.440 who hover near the reference shelves, hoping perhaps for talent 136 00:08:46.559 --> 00:08:51.559 to rub off. Beneath the routines lie unspoken certainties, less 137 00:08:51.559 --> 00:08:55.919 about bureaucracy than about the building itself. Two public flows, 138 00:08:56.120 --> 00:08:59.919 each well appointed but not luxurious. Nothing hidden in reserve 139 00:09:00.120 --> 00:09:03.080 beyond the crammed attic so shallow I must stoop to 140 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:06.440 traves it and the staff only boiler room in the bowels. 141 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:10.679 There are no other chambers. I know, because in mapping 142 00:09:10.679 --> 00:09:14.000 the attic and every crawl space I catalog the ghostly 143 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:18.720 pencil marks of past renovations traced, the plumber's graffiti recorded, 144 00:09:18.759 --> 00:09:23.519 which joists whistled with sea wind. No infectious mythos, no 145 00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:28.840 missing upper rooms, no rumors worth preserving. There's community pride 146 00:09:28.840 --> 00:09:33.080 here loudest during the annual Open Stacks festival, when city 147 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:36.679 officials parade through the main reading room and children search 148 00:09:36.759 --> 00:09:41.000 for fake lost volumes among the shelves. The continuity of 149 00:09:41.039 --> 00:09:44.720 place sustains everyone, a sense that the library is a 150 00:09:44.759 --> 00:09:48.840 fixed point in the city's shifting weather. The rare book collection, 151 00:09:49.279 --> 00:09:52.120 crammed into a locked annex next to the main office, 152 00:09:52.320 --> 00:09:55.879 is a prized relic. Every councilman has at some point 153 00:09:55.919 --> 00:09:58.360 demanded to know why there are so few treasures on 154 00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:03.799 public display, told bluntly that we lack the space. The 155 00:10:03.799 --> 00:10:07.799 city's skyline is low but unbroken, a long standing point 156 00:10:07.799 --> 00:10:11.080 of pride. Former city surveyors have been known to toast 157 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:14.799 the well proportioned profel of the bluff, its terraces, and 158 00:10:14.879 --> 00:10:18.799 the unmistakable wedge of the library's roof, contributing a sense 159 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:23.879 of continuity to both geography and identity around here. Every 160 00:10:23.879 --> 00:10:27.279 one knows the shape of things. I say all this 161 00:10:27.399 --> 00:10:30.480 not out of stubbornness, but so you'll understand why when 162 00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:33.480 that third floor blueprint appeared, it was more than a 163 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:37.320 stray curiosity. It was a challenge to both my experience 164 00:10:37.519 --> 00:10:41.039 and the institution's own sense of order. People ask me 165 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:44.080 for answers. Here. It's a burden and a pleasure. I 166 00:10:44.159 --> 00:10:47.600 know the limits of the place, or so until that morning, 167 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:52.000 I thought still blueprints can lie minds, too, So I 168 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:55.440 told myself it was some misplaced dream, a bureaucratic tangle 169 00:10:55.480 --> 00:10:59.759 destined for the discard pile. The alternative, something deliberately forgotten 170 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:02.879 or quietly erased, clashed too much with the building's well 171 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:06.279 tended continuity. I placed the third floor blueprint in my 172 00:11:06.320 --> 00:11:09.879 battered briefcase and postponed the next step. But something held 173 00:11:10.159 --> 00:11:12.960 a restlessness, like an itch under the skin, or the 174 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:17.279 faint pressure of misaligned bricks. I told no one, not yet. 175 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:21.240 The first real crack in my certainty appeared the very 176 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:24.960 next afternoon, browsed under a less forgiving fluorescent light in 177 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:28.240 the dusty back office I was helping mister Kershaw sought 178 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:32.039 old staff rosters for a grant application. Each pencil ledger 179 00:11:32.159 --> 00:11:35.799 a tessellation of numbers, initials, and notations in three different 180 00:11:35.799 --> 00:11:40.759 clerks hands. My task confirm years of service, match names 181 00:11:40.799 --> 00:11:45.120 to retirement records, and assign long service pins. A drowsy 182 00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:49.120 job usually, but after half an hour tracing lines down 183 00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:52.799 the nineteen sixty five roster I stopped. Certain shifts were 184 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:56.320 labeled three R, A M or three F sat not 185 00:11:56.440 --> 00:11:59.559 everywhere and not always the same people, but the pattern 186 00:11:59.639 --> 00:12:02.960 held year after year, surviving even the shift to electric 187 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:06.559 typewriters in the late seventies. At first, I thought perhaps 188 00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:10.080 the three was a misrecording, a desk code, or perhaps 189 00:12:10.120 --> 00:12:13.759 an obscure branch library. But the only branch was built 190 00:12:13.799 --> 00:12:17.679 in nineteen eighty nine. Three R appeared not just on 191 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:20.440 staff sheets, but again in the minu shai of a 192 00:12:20.519 --> 00:12:25.200 peril ledger denoting a pay differential for dome duty. I 193 00:12:25.279 --> 00:12:28.399 began to see the shape of a story I hadn't learned. 194 00:12:29.399 --> 00:12:31.960 Walking to the main staircase, something drew me to the 195 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:37.399 display cases outside circulation yearly event posters, clippings, carefully faded 196 00:12:37.679 --> 00:12:41.679 photos with edges curled in a nineteen sixty three Midwinter 197 00:12:41.759 --> 00:12:45.320 Reader th on upper gallery banner a nineteen seventy one 198 00:12:45.600 --> 00:12:50.679 lecture series Dome Reading Room Thursday Evenings. Both names belonged 199 00:12:50.720 --> 00:12:53.200 by logic to a space that, by all rights did 200 00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:57.480 not exist. I shared the oddity off hand with Missus Tomer, 201 00:12:57.639 --> 00:13:01.320 as she sought it returned books, expecting only a chuckle. 202 00:13:01.600 --> 00:13:05.279 I instead received a shrug. Oh, my aunt always talked 203 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:07.600 about the good view from up top when she worked here. 204 00:13:08.039 --> 00:13:11.559 That was ages ago. I've only ever known these two floors. 205 00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:15.519 Are you digging up old ghost stories? Arthur? As if 206 00:13:15.559 --> 00:13:19.960 summoned by rumination, Marina appeared at my elbow, towing a small, 207 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:24.879 delighted man with a remarkable capacity for opinion. Edwin, one 208 00:13:24.879 --> 00:13:28.000 of our long term regulars, wore a string of conference 209 00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:32.799 named tags and a wool vest dotted with tea stains. Arthur, 210 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:35.159 You're the man for this, aren't you. I used to 211 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:38.559 listen to poetry readings up under the glass ceiling, third 212 00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:42.000 floor mustiness, and all the echo was something you know, 213 00:13:43.159 --> 00:13:47.679 which room exactly? I pressed? He frowned, pressed a thumb 214 00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:50.759 to his chin, well near the top the dome room 215 00:13:50.879 --> 00:13:54.480 or gallery. I remember the sunlight, proper sunlight, and missus 216 00:13:54.480 --> 00:13:58.720 Callaghan reciting Blake. He grew vague, recounting the quality of 217 00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:01.879 the echo, the taste of lemonade, the way book dust 218 00:14:01.879 --> 00:14:04.679 shimmered in the air, but nothing about entry or the 219 00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:08.000 placement of the room itself. The details frayed as I 220 00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:12.399 tried to pull them closer. Oddities can be dismissed individually. 221 00:14:12.919 --> 00:14:16.519 Taken together, they began to collect weight, like silt layering 222 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:20.720 into rock. The blueprint, the staff, rosters, the recollections from 223 00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:24.759 two generations all painted an outline that refused to fit reality. 224 00:14:25.279 --> 00:14:28.759 It wasn't only a rogue architectural drawing. If the records 225 00:14:28.799 --> 00:14:32.399 and living memories insisted on a third floor. What precisely 226 00:14:32.559 --> 00:14:35.679 was I confronting, and why did the details so politely 227 00:14:35.720 --> 00:14:40.320 resist not only confirmation but recall. I resolved to cut 228 00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:43.279 quietly to the heart of it before dismissing the puzzle 229 00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:48.200 as mere institutional confusion. There's a professional pride to such things. 230 00:14:48.679 --> 00:14:53.320 If the pattern was only a typographical error, i'd know soon. Yet, 231 00:14:53.519 --> 00:14:56.120 in a way I can't quite account for, I found 232 00:14:56.120 --> 00:14:59.360 myself hoping the answer would resist just long enough to 233 00:14:59.360 --> 00:15:03.639 be interesting. There is a certain discipline in curiosity, a 234 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:07.120 knack for stacking evidence and waiting for structure to emerge. 235 00:15:07.559 --> 00:15:11.440 I started in the place any archivist would, the circulation records. 236 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:15.879 For ten consecutive mornings, I methodically paged through ledger after ledger, 237 00:15:16.159 --> 00:15:19.679 each decade's handwriting sprawling out like a family of spiders. 238 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.279 At first, I was only searching for echoes of three 239 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:27.799 R or dome in call numbers. There were plenty dozens 240 00:15:27.799 --> 00:15:31.519 of volumes returned or checked out from locations. No current 241 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:35.039 staff or shelf could account for three R one twenty 242 00:15:35.039 --> 00:15:39.440 four DOME, seventeen B three F catalog oddest of all 243 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:43.320 rare book items previously listed in the public catalog as 244 00:15:43.320 --> 00:15:47.720 stored in upstairs vault simply evaporated from all subsequent references, 245 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:52.159 or were reassigned vague shelf codes like annex. But this 246 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:55.960 was just the beginning. The ledgers occasionally referenced events set 247 00:15:56.039 --> 00:15:59.080 ups in the upper room, and cross referencing against the 248 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:02.840 microfilmed local arts pages from the sixties, I found listings 249 00:16:02.879 --> 00:16:07.240 for readings beneath the dome public welcome. The more I looked, 250 00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:10.559 the more evident it became that, for at least two decades, 251 00:16:10.879 --> 00:16:14.000 the city's own newspaper had blithely referred to events in 252 00:16:14.039 --> 00:16:17.159 a space that, by every present measure, did not exist. 253 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:21.799 Curiosity migrated from the page to the building itself. I 254 00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.720 took a measuring tape borrowed with a wink from the 255 00:16:24.720 --> 00:16:28.080 basement custodian, and began accounting for the difference between the 256 00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:32.320 internal floor heights and the exterior elevation reported in the blueprints. 257 00:16:32.879 --> 00:16:36.840 There was, as I suspected, very little leeway. The only 258 00:16:36.879 --> 00:16:39.440 way an extra floor could have existed was if the 259 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:43.720 attic was for some years massively taller, or conversely, if 260 00:16:43.759 --> 00:16:48.120 the current upper floor was once structurally different altogether. To 261 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:52.120 test this, I mapped the upstairs corridor. The staircase between 262 00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:56.360 first and second floors, always narrower than code required, felt 263 00:16:56.399 --> 00:17:00.000 steeper than I remembered. The landing at the top was generous, 264 00:17:00.279 --> 00:17:03.039 as if built to guide bodies further upwards or to 265 00:17:03.120 --> 00:17:06.400 a vanished set of doors. The ceiling panel above the 266 00:17:06.480 --> 00:17:09.759 landing was patched in a different color, boards newer than 267 00:17:09.799 --> 00:17:14.039 adjacent paint. One evening, thumbing through a battered ledger in 268 00:17:14.079 --> 00:17:17.839 the archives, I saw a half raised pencil note third 269 00:17:18.039 --> 00:17:22.920 f l keys staff only. My nerves tingled not with fear, 270 00:17:23.160 --> 00:17:25.960 but with the heady recognition of pattern, the thrill of 271 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:30.480 hearing a fragment of song buried in white noise. Meanwhile, 272 00:17:30.559 --> 00:17:33.359 I circulated among the staff and volunteers to see who 273 00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:36.480 would recall details others missed. In the break room, I 274 00:17:36.519 --> 00:17:40.799 asked two retired custodians about lugging crates upstairs. They both 275 00:17:40.839 --> 00:17:44.759 nodded upstairs, sure, but which upstairs? Not sure? We could 276 00:17:44.799 --> 00:17:48.680 say it was long ago. Sometimes you went up, sometimes down. 277 00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:52.559 The conversation wobbled, as if their memory of the building's 278 00:17:52.599 --> 00:17:57.599 boundaries flexed by the year. Archival permits offered more contradictions. 279 00:17:58.039 --> 00:18:01.960 A roof repair application from ninety sixty seven referenced dome 280 00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:06.319 glass cleaning staff harnesses. Yet no one ever photographed a dome. 281 00:18:06.680 --> 00:18:10.519 Every salvaged exterior shot from local press archives shows the 282 00:18:10.559 --> 00:18:15.880 same peaked gables, no structural protuberance, no windows suggesting curved glass. 283 00:18:16.480 --> 00:18:20.319 I phoned the city's new planning official, young, polite, as 284 00:18:20.359 --> 00:18:25.279 yet unmauled by bureaucracy. She searched her digital records and 285 00:18:25.319 --> 00:18:30.079 could produce only blueprints for two floors. Anything older, she apologized, 286 00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:34.279 must predate digitization or be an error in the old records. 287 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:37.880 I thought about tossing the evidence aside as so much 288 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:42.079 administrative static, but each contradiction made things worse, not better. 289 00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:46.400 Tourist guide books from nineteen sixty one and nineteen seventy eight, 290 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:50.160 unearthed by a writer friend, always too eager to help 291 00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:54.480 describe the panoramic view from the library dome, even offering 292 00:18:54.519 --> 00:18:59.519 a small illustration. The most recent renovations, performed in two 293 00:18:59.599 --> 00:19:04.039 thousand two included nothing but roofing panels and attic insulation, 294 00:19:04.559 --> 00:19:09.119 with no trace of dismantled glass or missing stairwells. With 295 00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:13.680 every new piece, possibility widened rather than shrank. No fear, 296 00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:17.920 only an expanding fascination. Each contradiction like a string pulled 297 00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:22.240 from a sweater, exposing more unraveled territory. What began as 298 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:26.319 a catalog error was now sprawling through architecture, memory and 299 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:31.519 collective record, a third floor persistently present in documentation, legend, 300 00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:35.039 and recollection, yet as absent as a ghost behind the brick. 301 00:19:36.079 --> 00:19:39.880 I found myself recalibrating. Maybe it was time to accept 302 00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:43.000 that the impossible was not merely a thing dismissed, but 303 00:19:43.119 --> 00:19:48.319 a state that required understanding on its own terms. One afternoon, 304 00:19:48.559 --> 00:19:51.119 as clouds slugged in off the sea and the wind 305 00:19:51.200 --> 00:19:55.599 slapped slate tiles overhead, a thunder storm rolled through, trapping 306 00:19:55.599 --> 00:19:58.920 me in the library well. After closing, the windows went 307 00:19:58.960 --> 00:20:02.480 gray black electric with weather, and the power flickered once 308 00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:06.359 or twice while I restlessly prowled the quieter corners excuse 309 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:11.160 enough to keep looking. I took out my carpenter's tape blueprints, 310 00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:14.880 including the strange third floor drawing, and a thick notepad, 311 00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:18.000 then paced every hallway, nook and stare with the slow 312 00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:21.599 patience of habit I measured each story's rise from the ground, 313 00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:25.720 comparing the actual distances to those marked by the contemporary blueprints, 314 00:20:25.960 --> 00:20:30.039 and weighing them against the building's exterior. Above the second floor, 315 00:20:30.279 --> 00:20:32.880 there should have been just enough space for a shallow attic, 316 00:20:33.319 --> 00:20:37.839 the kind crammed with heating ducts and regret. But curious 317 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:41.640 things emerged. The internal vertical distance from the first to 318 00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:45.519 second floor was markedly greater than it appeared from the outside, 319 00:20:45.880 --> 00:20:48.799 as if some portion of space had been compressed or 320 00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:52.440 collapsed downward. Not enough for a grand reading room, no, 321 00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:56.799 but enough for me to notice. Even the ceiling beams 322 00:20:56.839 --> 00:20:59.960 of the second floor seemed wrong, older than the surren 323 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:06.119 bounding plaster, possibly repurposed or relocated during some undocumented renovation. 324 00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:10.279 Still bracing from the chill, I rummaged through a shadowy 325 00:21:10.319 --> 00:21:13.880 staff closet rarely touched since the sixties, by the evidence 326 00:21:13.880 --> 00:21:17.119 of the box of ration stamps wedged behind cleaning supplies 327 00:21:17.559 --> 00:21:20.599 and peeling back several layers of paint. I exposed a 328 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:24.119 shimmer of old metal, a brass plate. I scraped at 329 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:27.519 it with my thumbnil until its clue became legible three 330 00:21:27.759 --> 00:21:31.799 f attendant use only it read the font, heavy, formal, 331 00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:37.119 indifferent to present need. My mind scribbled fresh lines of possibility. 332 00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:41.519 On the one hand, so many references, records, blueprints, even 333 00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:45.799 memories specifically and doggedly insisted on a third floor. On 334 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:49.440 the other, no present day staff, no physical evidence in 335 00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:52.680 the current blueprint or skyline, no practical way for an 336 00:21:52.839 --> 00:21:56.759 entire room, let aloner architectural dome and reading hall to 337 00:21:56.799 --> 00:22:00.440 be erased without a trace. Was it error, a fragment 338 00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:03.839 caught in the machinery of city memory? Or was it 339 00:22:03.880 --> 00:22:08.079 a matter of pride, a plan abandoned, half built, its legend, 340 00:22:08.119 --> 00:22:11.079 given space to grow in the cracks of history. Was 341 00:22:11.119 --> 00:22:15.400 it an architectural illusion, a floor that existed not in brick, 342 00:22:15.720 --> 00:22:19.759 but in documents, recycled by each new generation, made real 343 00:22:19.839 --> 00:22:23.640 by the force of community wish. Standing with the brass 344 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:26.319 plate cooling my palm, I felt a shift in my 345 00:22:26.400 --> 00:22:29.960 center of gravity. I realized suddenly that I had been 346 00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:33.200 approaching this as a mystery of physical absence, seeking to 347 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:36.759 prove or disprove the existence of a floor, but the 348 00:22:36.759 --> 00:22:41.359 stubborn presence of the third floor in every other medium, memory, paper, 349 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:45.720 local legend suggested another kind of reality, one less concerned 350 00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:48.720 with beams and stairs than with how a city gathers 351 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:52.119 its own layers of belief. For the first time in 352 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:55.359 my career, I found myself less interested in proving a 353 00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:59.039 negative and more curious about while a place so thoroughly 354 00:22:59.039 --> 00:23:04.079 erased could leave such an articulate residue, a living sedimental trace, 355 00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:09.200 resisting explanation on purpose. So I wrote out my hypotheses 356 00:23:09.400 --> 00:23:14.720 scribbling on a lined pad. Abandoned expansion plan, recurrent clerical error, 357 00:23:14.759 --> 00:23:17.559 a city wide slip of memory, a space built and 358 00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:22.480 later removed, an architectural illusion so convincing it appropriated history itself. 359 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:25.799 For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine that 360 00:23:25.880 --> 00:23:29.599 in some way each possibility might coexist. What was more 361 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:33.240 real the floor as documented and remembered or the floor 362 00:23:33.319 --> 00:23:37.759 as built and touched. The questions only widened. I was 363 00:23:37.839 --> 00:23:42.400 drifting from answer toward understanding, a state both more satisfying 364 00:23:42.680 --> 00:23:46.720 and less resolved than I had expected. A Few days later, 365 00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:50.720 the city's Local History Society hosted its monthly swap meet 366 00:23:50.920 --> 00:23:53.920 in the Church Hall across from the library. I went 367 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:57.640 every few months, mostly for the gossip and occasionally a 368 00:23:57.680 --> 00:24:02.079 good map. That Saturday, huddled in a crowd of genealogists 369 00:24:02.079 --> 00:24:05.960 and post card hawkers, my curiosity sharpened. Amid the dust 370 00:24:06.039 --> 00:24:10.400 and fluorescence. Shuffling through a carton of rolled survey maps 371 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:13.440 and water stained pamphlets, I nearly missed the oddest find, 372 00:24:13.799 --> 00:24:17.559 a nineteen sixty two city survey. Its cover creased stenciled 373 00:24:17.559 --> 00:24:21.640 in peacock blue, wide unfolded, it displayed street grids and 374 00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:24.920 in tidy script the defining landmarks. At the center of 375 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:28.599 the bluff. The library box was clearly marked library third 376 00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:32.599 floor glass dome, a fine line indicating a geometric dome 377 00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:37.240 on the roof dome. Reading room written alongside the map 378 00:24:37.359 --> 00:24:41.160 was not an artist's fancy. A surveyor's stamp and city 379 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:46.079 engineer signature attested to its official use. My hands shook 380 00:24:46.200 --> 00:24:49.559 just a little, but the evidence didn't end there. One donor, 381 00:24:49.599 --> 00:24:53.759 Missus Jewson, was unloading a battered envelope of old library photographs, 382 00:24:54.079 --> 00:24:57.920 mostly volunteer days and book fares near the bottom three 383 00:24:57.960 --> 00:25:01.079 sun faded prints. Sunlight glints through what could only be 384 00:25:01.119 --> 00:25:04.680 a curved, arched ceiling of glass above tables crowded with 385 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:09.119 books and in pots. On the reverse in faded pen Library, 386 00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:14.359 third floor, September nineteen sixty one. The excitement was impossible 387 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.839 to hide. As I spread the evidence out for closer inspection, 388 00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:21.519 a figure drawn by the buzz leaned over. Misyuki Sato, 389 00:25:21.839 --> 00:25:24.960 a local architect and, as it happened, granddaughter of the 390 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:28.839 library's original builder. She carried with her a battered notebook 391 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:32.559 edged with engineer's diagrams, and after some urging, shared a 392 00:25:32.599 --> 00:25:37.279 page Upper Floor Keys and Dome Maintenance nineteen sixty five 393 00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:42.359 in the tight, meticulous hand of her grandfather, tucked inside 394 00:25:42.680 --> 00:25:46.519 a sketch of a gallery key three R badge, accompanied 395 00:25:46.519 --> 00:25:50.920 by shorthand notes about heating, dampers and summer ventilation above 396 00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:56.440 the dome stair. The contradictions were complete. Here was empirical evidence, 397 00:25:56.759 --> 00:26:01.160 not just paperwork or hearsay, but city records, folk potographs, anecdotes, 398 00:26:01.160 --> 00:26:05.599 and design sketches, all insisting with bureaucratic insistence and tactile 399 00:26:05.599 --> 00:26:08.799 specificity that the third floor was not just a legend, 400 00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:12.839 not just an administrative error, but a real, functional, and 401 00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:18.559