Restoring Photos for Lynbrook Library’s 90th Anniversary

The Lynbrook Public Library will reach its 90th anniversary in 2019, and in honor of this milestone, the Photo Illustration class took a trip to the library to restore some of its historic photos and learned a bit about the library’s history in the process.

The first plans to open a library in Lynbrook began in 1906; however, it was postponed due to a financial crisis in the following year. Then, in 1913, a Founders Committee of 12 women, led by Orrell Hancock, obtained contributions of five-hundred books and opened a library on Blake Avenue, consisting of only two rooms. This became known as the Lynbrook Free Library in 1914. In 1915, the library rented larger quarters, half of a double store on Atlantic Avenue owned by a Mr. Talfor. Finally, by 1916, the Village Board had voted to subsidize the library’s expenses at $600 annually after realizing the civic value of a library, which was renamed from the Lynbrook Free Library to the Lynbrook Public Library.

The library remained in Talfor’s building until 1921, when he needed space for business expansion. In order to raise money for another building, the founders organized fund raising drives such as card parties, cake sales, and donations. They purchased half of a small building on Broadway, which they would occupy from 1921 to 1929. The building stood at the west corner of Broadway and Merrick Road. The founders all volunteered to organize the library for the first 10 years of its existence. They worked in pairs, and each member devoted two months a year in a monthly rotation to keep the library functioning. Finally, in 1929, the Lynbrook Public Library that people know today was opened on Eldert Street, on land donated by Thomas F. O’Conner and Tredwell Carpenter. This fully equipped modern library cost $60,000, $20,000 of which was spent on books and equipment.

The goal of the field trip to the Lynbrook Public Library was to delve deeper into its’ rich history and illustrate that history through photos and pictures. The library wanted to put restored and enlarged pictures up around the library to celebrate its 90th anniversary and present its colorful history. To meet its goal, the library entrusted its photos to be restored by the students of the Photo Illustration class. The class has been studying the many tools that assist in the restoration process. Art Teacher Jennifer Turner taught students the necessary steps of restoring a photo. Students practiced and honed their skills on personal photos that required restoring. They became familiar with the different techniques and were ready to move on to restoring the library’s photos.

The first step to restoring the photos was to take the pictures from the library and scan them, making the pictures appear online. This allowed students to start editing the photos. Students then used filters on Adobe Photoshop to brighten and clear up the photos. This made the photos more saturated and vibrant. Next, students had to clear up scratches and small imperfections within the photos. They used tools such as the spot healing brush and the patch tool to do this. These tools filled in missing spaces by using pixels from another part of the image. After the small imperfections were cleared up, students went on to restore larger missing parts of the image. Some of the photos given by the library had many pieces of the photo missing, such as an entire library shelf or a person’s face. These were the most challenging parts of the restoration process, since students did not have a reference of what the missing areas looked like. Students had to assume what was missing and what to replace it with. A trick most students would use was to copy an area of the image that was similar to the missing area and paste back onto the missing area. This created a foundation in which they could work from. They then had to make the photos look as natural as possible, by adding effects such as shadows and highlights. When they were done, the photos were posted on the students’ individual Photo Illustration websites so Turner can access them and print them for the library.

The pictures will be enlarged to poster size so they can be hung up. The library will then receive the enlarged and restored photos and arrange them around the library to commemorate its 90th anniversary.