Mountain Top Library
The Mountain Top Library is a distinctly wonderful place. The building is an adapted church with a vaulted ceiling supported by tremendous wooden arches.
Its spacious interior is like a communal living room, where lounge seats, work tables, bookcases, toys, and frequently, free coffee and snacks, sprawl out and beckon. Illuminated by a stained glass window on the front-facing wall, the library seems to sanctify the everyday.
We were awestruck by this unique library during our first visit in the summer of 2024. As we wandered the space, we were fortunate to meet Jaki Elmo-Emel, the library director. Almost immediately, it was clear that Mountain Top deserved an ambitious and beautiful project.
The library serves the village of Tannersville and hamlet of Haines Falls in Greene County, NY, near some of the Catskills best-known forests. North-South Lake and Hunter Mountain Ski Resort draw seasonal residents and recreational vacationers. The year-round community of Tannersville (population <1000) works and lives the challenges of both rural mountain life and gentrification. Jaki told us that alongside programming and lending materials, the library spends a great deal of time connecting folks to resources that are hard to find in a remote place.
Over the following year, we had numerous conversations with Jaki to discuss potential spaces and concepts for a Processing Collapse artwork. One day, she mentioned a need for increased space to house the non-circulating local history collection. We saw the amazing materials stashed in a staff office, including atlases, maps, local publications, and guides to the Catskills. We began to wonder how our work might host and engage with local history.
To locate the forest in Tannersville’s past, we started with the name of the village itself. Workers from nearby leather tanneries made a settlement on the mountain; hence the name “Tanners’-Ville.” Other Catskills place names reflect this industry too. Prattsville and Palenville, also in Greene County, are named after “tanlords.” During the 19th century, regional leather tanneries were using the bark of Eastern hemlock trees to process animal hides into leather.
Hemlocks were abundant on slopes and along mountain brooks across the Catskills. Bark-peeling crews felled these trees to strip their bark, or girdled them standing, usually leaving the wood to rot. This went on for decades, denuding stand after stand of hemlock and causing fundamental changes to the ecosystem. The extraction led to erosion, warming streams, and most notably, the replacement of Eastern hemlocks in many places with fast-growing hardwood trees. By the end of the 19th century, the industry was coming to a halt as resources dwindled drastically. This was a regional near-obliteration of a species.
Eastern hemlock already has a major place in Tannersville’s history. Its significance as a resource, and the impact of its extraction on local industry has been well-documented. As forest preservation permitted the slow regrowth and return of hemlock throughout the 1900s, second-growth stands have established around Greene County. However, the species faces an existential threat today. An imported insect, hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) is bringing on the mass mortality of Eastern hemlock throughout its range. In the lower and mid-Hudson Valley it has already killed innumerable trees, upending habitat once again.
Barkpeelings in the Adirondacks, c. 1890s-1900s.
HWA-afflicted hemlocks in Mohonk Preserve, 2025.
Since the death of these trees is no longer happening under axe and saw, it is easy to feel disconnected from this shift in the forest. Nature lovers on hikes in the Catskills may remain unaware of the active collapse. The adelgid was imported to the U.S. through Asian hemlock trees shipped to nurseries for ornamental planting. Like ash and American chestnut, the mass mortality of this native tree is collateral damage from our global trade systems.
On walks in the forest, we notice Eastern hemlock root masses reveal intricate tangles of soil, rock, and other plant life. This species has a shallow root system, so it is rather easy for a weakened tree to pull up from the bottom during a storm. As the population weakens and withers from HWA infestation, this sight is becoming increasingly common.
Uprooted, Haines Falls
We were invited to participate in an art event called The Longest Day by Alexander Lyle. We had visited Alex’s property in Haines Falls (about 15 minutes from Mountain Top) to look at a large Eastern hemlock that had fallen and left its impressive root mass exposed beside the road. As our first foray into exploring hemlock collapse, we decided to excavate the roots of this tree.
Proposal
In October 2025, we made our project proposal to Jaki. It was enthusiastically embraced!
On the front face of the library vestibule, we will install two ten-foot tall, hand-carved hemlock bough sculptures. We will render the needles, growth nodes, and buds of Eastern hemlock at 125 times their living scale. These monumental boughs will resemble totem poles or columns fashioned after botanical specimens.
We have designed a custom set of secure cabinets to house the non-circulating local history collection. Our goal is to increase public engagement with these materials, preserve them, and make room for the collection to grow. The display cases can accommodate artifacts like antique tools, maps, and other objects that tell the story of Tannersville. These cabinets will be situated along the left and right outside walls of the vestibule.