If you approach the Mt. Pleasant Branch Library from 16th Street NW, you’d never know that over two years worth of work was done on the building. But as you walk along Lamont Street to where an alley used to cut through behind the 1925 Indiana limestone structure, a modern rear addition to the library emerges, its chessboard-like facade rising from the top of a ramp that leads to what is the library’s new entrance.

Tomorrow at noon city officials will throw open the doors to the renovated structure, once again offering residents a full-service neighborhood library that they haven’t had since April 2010. The project, which cost close to $12 million to complete, isn’t as dramatic as some neighborhood libraries that were razed and rebuilt from the ground up, but rather maintains the historic elements of the building while adding space and amenities with a three-floor addition growing out from behind the original structure.

On a tour of the library this morning, D.C. Librarian Ginnie Cooper said that the goal of the renovations—led by CORE, a D.C.-based architecture and design firm—was to “clean out as much of the historic library and make it available to the public.” To that end, the 8,000-square-foot addition was added to the 16,000-square-foot building, allowing library officials to open up space in the historic core for what they deem are the basics for a neighborhood library: 60,000 to 80,000 books, 40 computers, a media room, a conference room, study rooms, meeting rooms, and a large space for children’s programming.

The new addition isn’t glued to the back of the historic building, though, but rather connected by a light-filled atrium that serves as the library’s new entrance. (The location of the entrance had to be moved to accomodate an ADA-compliant ramp.) Upon entering, your eyes are drawn upward; one one side is the building’s old limestone wall, on the other the sleek new addition.

The library’s first floor houses fiction, audio and video collections, a circulation desk, and computers. The second floor, on the other hand, is set aside for children, with an expanded reading area. (Cooper told me that an existing stairwell straight to the second floor was originally used by children to avoid going through the library’s main entrance. Kids, it seems, were to be neither seen nor heard.) A basement-level floor serves young adults and non-fiction.

Much like other historic libraries that were renovated in recent years—Petworth, Georgetown, and Takoma Park, for example—the design team that worked on the Mt. Pleasant Library sought to maintain as many historic flourishes as possible. Benches and tile-work above two fireplaces remain, and mid-century chairs—both metal and wood—were refinished.

Library officials were especially careful in preserving two second-floor alcoves that are decorated with Works Progress Administration-era murals of cartoon animals. Painted by Aurelius Battaglia, D.C. native who went on to illustrate Disney classics like Dumbo, Fantasia, and Pinocchio, the murals wrap around the walls of the two small alcoves, which have largely survived the years. (Only one segment was damaged in a prior renovation, and it is being restored.) Battaglia’s family will be on hand for tomorrow’s opening, Cooper said.

Of course, none of this happened painlessly, hence the two-and-a-half years that the renovation took to complete. A Ralph Nader-funded group protested the demolition of an attached sun room to build the new addition and complained that the new ramp leading to the entrance is too long and steep to properly serve handicapped users. City officials largely dismissed those concerns.

Cooper, though, is proud of the work and says that she thinks residents will be too. While the library officially opens tomorrow, she said that a community day has been scheduled for Saturday to better allow users to enjoy the renovated library.