To enrich your Sheridan Mall shopping experience, check out Black Creek Library on the lower level between a denture clinic and a dry cleaners. A resident of the mall since 2002, Black Creek branch shares its architect, G. Bruce Stratton, with fellow mall-libraries Woodside Square and Bayview.
When I visited a couple of Saturdays ago, I found Black Creek’s cream and brown colours very inviting, drawing me into a comfortable mall-cave. Stratton’s website wasn’t exaggerating when it described the library’s design concept as “bright and warm with flowing lines.” Responding to the cosiness, the patrons I saw really seemed at home in the newspaper lounge and the branch in general. Every computer was taken, including one screen surrounded by a spirited group of kids hooting at You-tube videos.
Liveliness was further supported by a dragon with flame-shaped eyebrows, a nearby bubble-gum rocket, and a series of wooden cutouts on the south wall that depicted happy kids with their arms up in the air. Two grey cardboard castles provided slightly more subdued decoration, but a closer look revealed a courtyard that sparkled with multicoloured glitter and a blue clay moat.
The most distinctive feature of Black Creek was a magical reading zone whose borders were defined by a semi-circular wall about four feet high and a tiled pillar opposite the wall. The shiny pillar supported a round structure overhead that Stewart compared to a showerhead. Hanging from the tiled showerhead were delicate lights enclosed in purple and dark-red glass which illuminated a round table and small chairs below. Completing the stylish nook were shelves built into the inside curve of the wall.
Stewart was getting library-weary after visiting three in one afternoon, so before leaving I just took a quick glance at the ESL collection (meaty) and the multilingual shelves (diverse). Languages on offer were Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, and Vietnamese. I also stopped to consider how Black Creek influences the atmosphere of North York Sheridan Mall.
Ever since I saw my first mall library in Canada five years ago, I’ve always considered the idea somewhat odd. Borrowing books seems so out of place in a zone where everything else is for sale. However, I’m becoming more and more appreciative of the fact that mall branches like Black Creek, Bridlewood, Eglinton Square, and Maryvale provide welcome patches of public space in a larger establishment devoted almost exclusively to private profit. In this way, a library “redeems” a mall instead of tainting itself with the surrounding commercialism. I think we need these literary ambassadors of the immaterial in a material world.