All text below is quoted from the souvenir booklet printed for the Edith B. Ford Memorial Library open house June 10, 1962.
Since the Edith B. Ford Memorial Library has the same donor as the Ovid Municipal Building, it was thought advisable to have some thread of harmony between the two buildings, especially since they are across the street from each other. Consequently, the front wall of the Children's Reading Room, which constitutes a memorial tablet to Edith B. Ford, is made from the same color Minnesota limestone as the Municipal Building. The brick work harmonizes with the color of the stone.
The roof of the building is flat, with the underside creating a series of pyramids; the underside of the exterior portion of these pyramids is finished with ceramic tile having radiating lines from the columns to the eaves. At the junction of these radiating lines and the columns, the tile patterns create the illusion of column caps in different colors. The pyramidal surfaces create a feeling of uplift toward the eave of the building, symbolic of the expanding horizons imparted by research and education.
The main reading room is the focal point of the interior with its book stacks, cork floor and high ceiling with pendant lighting fixtures. The high wood panel at the narrow end of the room behind the librarian's charge desk carries the names of various great contributors to literature, arts and sciences with an admonishment from the Proverbs toward a greater understanding of life. To the right and left of this panel, ceramic murals depict the history of writing and printing as well as enumerate the various arts, music, sculpture and the higher cultural attainments of man. In this connection, the windows with the stained glass portraits of the world's greatest thinkers and artists give added impetus to the desire for self betterment.
A special room has been provided for children to kindle interest in the very young. Appropriate reading matter will be provided here to enhance the enthusiasm of learning and to create interest in accomplishments of the future. An adequate stock room has been provided where rare and expensive volumes may be kept under direct supervision of the librarian and where repairs may be made to injured volumes.
Of special interest to the community is a general purpose room in the basement which may be used as an historical museum and a lecture room for various cultural interests. This room is provided with heat, ventilation and electrical outlets for audio-visual means of projecting illusrations and amplifying lectures. In addition this room may be used for various community gatherings and civic enterprises.
The building blends with the surrounding park and seems a part of it.
[The rest of this 1962 open house "souvenir booklet" is quoted under History.]
