The Dover Historic District Commission unanimously approved the architect’s plans for a new two-story, 46,000-square-foot Dover Public Library, while acknowledging staff comments and raising a few points of their own at a June 17 meeting.

    The plans still need to go before the Dover Planning Commission.

    Commission member Joe McDaniel liked how the architects really captured the differing viewpoints he remembered from the public meetings.

    “I think they were charged to do something and they did it,” he said. “I think the concept of the building is to the mark.”

    However, C. Terry Jackson, an architect and member of the commission, had a couple of concerns. He said having the vertical roof elements made out of the same material as the roof itself was a little jarring to his eye — especially when compared to all the other chimneys in the area — and something echoed by other commission members.

    Holzman Moss architect Douglas Moss said they moved away from making the light monitors on the roof, which mimic Georgian-style chimneys, out of brick for weight reasons. However, if the roof is slate they perhaps could be made of metal, or vice versa, he said.

    Jackson also asked why the architects made the ends of the building out of rough stone or fieldstone when it’s not a material normally used in the central Delaware region.

     “My eye does a jump whenever I see fieldstone on the walls this far south,” he said. “Delaware is a very curious place. In the upper county you might as well be somewhere between Massachusetts and Connecticut, the middle county is that Mid-Atlantic and the southern county might as well be somewhere between Georgia and South Carolina.”

    Moss said the Ashlar stone they are looking at is cut on all sides except for the front and back, which will be seen from the exterior and interior. It is a similar color as the majority of the brick already used in the building. By using two colors of brick and the stone on a building that is going to be one of the longest in the historic district they are trying to break up the building’s size.

    “Part of this has to do with texture and how the light is going to hit it as it goes from east to west, and part of it has to do with breaking up the overall scale,” Moss said.

    He also pointed out that the stone is more often used in this area in Victorian construction. McDaniel later said he liked that the building was textually different even though the stones aren’t coming from a quarry in Kent County.

    Despite his questions, Jackson was happy with the design on the whole.

    “I quite frankly think you have used the overall design of the building to differ, pull away from the rampant Georgian allegiance on the [Legislative] mall, and I applaud you for doing that,” he said.

Email Jayne Gest at jayne.gest@doverpost.com