EDUCATION | NEWS
The 1908 Carnegie building on Napoleon Avenue is now a dedicated space for children five and under and their caregivers. City and library officials cut the ribbon Saturday.
By Kim M. Braud | October 3, 2026
NEW ORLEANS - The New Orleans Public Library formally reopened the Children's Resource Center on Saturday morning, cutting the ribbon on a renovated 118-year-old Carnegie building that now serves as the library system's dedicated early literacy center.
The building at 913 Napoleon Ave., at the corner of Magazine Street, closed May 12, 2025 for repairs and a redesign. It reopened to the public on Tuesday, Sept. 29, Verite News reported, ahead of Saturday's ceremony.
The room was loud. Library staff said that was the point.
A building with a long assignment
The Napoleon Branch opened in 1908 as one of the library branches built with funds from Andrew Carnegie. Library leaders converted it into the Children's Resource Center in the 1990s, said Emily Painton, executive director and city librarian of the New Orleans Public Library.
When the building needed significant structural repairs, Painton said, the library treated the project as a chance to answer its strategic plan. Residents surveyed for that plan identified early literacy as a priority, and the library set out to build a space for young children and the adults who care for them.
"Early literacy is where we can make the greatest difference in a child's life." - Emily Painton, New Orleans Public Library
The center is free to use. Painton described it as a place where families can read together "with no cost and no barriers standing in the way."
Every child deserves the chance to fall in love with reading.
What the work cost
Mayor Helena Moreno walked the audience, many of them small children, through the repair list. The building had water damage and termite damage. Crews replaced the roof and damaged plaster, restored masonry, repaired the windows, installed new floors and repaired the bathrooms, she said.
Moreno put the project cost at about $473,000, paid for with bond dollars and with money from the library's dedicated property tax millage.
The renovation was managed by the city's Capital Projects Administration, according to the library's 2025 announcement.
Why early literacy
A member of the library board who identified herself as its vice chair, an educator and a mother of three young children, told the crowd that early literacy is one of the strongest markers of later success in school. She said Louisiana has posted gains in the share of kindergarten through third grade students reading on grade level, and that a free, research-based space for very young children helps build on those gains.
Shannan Cvitanovic, executive director of the Library Foundation of New Orleans, said she spent 10 years directing adult literacy programs at the Main Library before joining the foundation. Most of her adult students, she said, came to learn to read so they could help their children in school.
"It is easier to raise a child to be a reader than it is to teach an adult to read." - Shannan Cvitanovic, Library Foundation of New Orleans
The foundation is the library's fundraising arm. It took its current form this year, when the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library and the New Orleans Public Library Foundation merged into a single organization.
The parents who came to learn to read were doing it for their children.
Inside the center
Christine McCourtney, the library's former head of early childhood literacy, said she worked at the library for 16 years, nine of them in early childhood literacy. She said watching families return to story time week after week told her the work was succeeding.
Morgan Hanrahan, who succeeded her as head of early literacy and now manages the center, said the noise level in the room on Saturday was exactly what staff hoped for. "That is all we could ever want from this center," she said.
According to the library's early literacy page, the center includes an interactive play area for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, and a collection chosen to support early learners and their caregivers as they build reading and school-readiness skills. Verite News reported that the layout trades many of the old book stacks for play areas, including a pretend restaurant and laundromat, a small theater and a baby area.
Moreno closed her remarks by reading a short Dr. Seuss passage about reading aloud with a young girl from the audience. McCourtney then cut the ribbon.
The Children's Resource Center is at 913 Napoleon Ave.
Kim M. Braud is the Founder & Editor of Evans Cutchmore Press, an independent newsroom covering Louisiana and the Gulf South. Her reporting focuses on government accountability, infrastructure, business, culture, and the public policies that shape communities.
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