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The new library building is part of an urban composition; which links the existing Neo-Georgian City Hall, the Library and Olmstead Park into a single, interrelated administrative and culture complex.

The urbanistic strategy is that of the traditional American campus or town green, with the discrete volumes of the buildings defining the edges of the open space. The new Library is placed on the longitudinal axis of the Olmstead ponds, whereas the City Hall is located on the cross axis. Buildings and landscape have thus become firmly anchored in their place; their architectural features, roof shapes and towers, and the language of wall openings and materials are sympathetically related.

The building is entered from a small forecourt facing the ponds or across a footbridge from the parking lot side. A spacious lobby joins the two entrances and leads to the circulation desk and reference hall. The three-story library is grouped around the triple height atrium reference hall. The nave space terminates in an apsidal form which contains reading spaces on three levels overlooking a picturesque cemetery. The strong figural character of the plan provides a comprehensibility of place and orientation in the otherwise extensive book stack areas. Readers find themselves never remote from open views of the internal atrium or surrounding landscape.

The ground level contains the entrance lobby, the reference hall, current and paperback collections, a children's library, and staff support spaces; also such community related spaces as the multi-purpose room and exhibition spaces. On the two upper levels are the reading spaces with carrels around the atrium balconies, stacks for fiction and non-fiction and the audio-visual department. The main vertical connection is provided by a centrally placed oval staircase which links the circulation desk and entrance lobby with all the levels of the library.
The exterior building materials are red molded brick with a limestone coping, granite base and slate roof. The entry lobby is paved with dark gray terrazzo, while the other primary library spaces are carpeted in rich colors.