Charlottesville Library Roof Leak

For years and years, through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, the roof of Charlottesville's Edgemont Rd. building leaked - into the library. Water dripped, trickled, and on some occasions poured in when there were heavy or extended rains, and the assorted containers to catch water were a constant presence. Larger containers regularly housed rubber ducks and wind-up bath toys. University of Virginia's Physical Plant staff tried various unsuccessful fixes, including capping the large skylight in the center of the library ceiling. However, the skylight itself had never leaked, and capping it only made the flooding worse, since all the water that once pooled inside the raised rim of the skylight then sluiced off onto the surrounding roof. On the Friday night of a rainy Memorial Day weekend in the mid-1980s, one of the computer operators (yes, we still had round-the-clock computer operators then) came up to the library for a journal and discovered two-inch deep (and rising) water on the library floor. He and several others who happened to be in the building emptied overflowing water barrels and, with garden hoses one person brought from his nearby home, improvised a drain to carry water from the second floor library, down the stairs, and out into the parking lot. Due to their quick action, only 40-50 volumes were damaged. One person went up to the attic to look at the roof and reported that there was so much water UNDER the asphalt roofing that it surface undulated like a waterbed. After that flood, the entire roof over the library was torn off, and the long-time culprit, a massive crack in the sub-roof, was revealed. Once a new sub-roof and roof were installed, the buckets, garbage pails, and rubber ducks were permanently retired. One rubber duck still resides in the NRAO/AUI Archives as a reminder of those years.

Records of the NRAO

Still Image

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Publications Series

Observer Unit