The Silver Spring Library is a public space and a node in Downtown Silver Spring. People can go inside the building but since it is located on a corner, it is a place where paths converge outside of the building. Half a mile up Wayne Avenue is Silver Spring International Middle School and Sligo Creek Elementary School. After school students can easily walk up Wayne Avenue and meet at the library to study. This location is also convenient for the many people living in the apartments and homes that surround the library. The old Silver Spring Library is only half a mile north from the new library. This library was right off a Colesville Road. Although the library was near some apartments and a neighborhood, it was not a convenient walk for all the people that lived in the apartments that are located by Wayne Avenue. Also, since the old library was on the other side of Spring Street, there was a lot less foot traffic compared to the foot traffic we see in front of the Wayne Avenue location. Unless you lived in the neighborhood between Spring Street and Colesville Road, you most likely drove to the old library.
The heart of Downtown Silver Spring is enclosed by Wayne Avenue, Georgia Avenue, Colesville Road, and Spring Street. These roads create boundaries for the plaza, community center, Regal Majestic movie theater, City Place Mall, Whole Foods, and rows of popular food chains that make up the core of Downtown Silver Spring. South of Wayne is where a Safeway, gas stations, and small business are located. Wayne serves as a dividing line between the planned out downtown Silver Spring and the less organized area called Fenton Village. Colesville Road ends at the border between Maryland and Washington DC. This is also the road where the old library was located on. One could take a right turn into the old library off of Colesville Road, but this six-lane road has speeding cars and usually the turn was a risky one. The old library also did not accommodate as many cars as the new library does. There was a parking lot in front of the old library that was shared with the neighboring park. However, just across the street from the new library, there is a parking garage with other 1,000 spaces and another lot of the same size just a block away. The proximity to this parking garage allows people to park in the garage and be able to shop, eat, and go to the library in one trip. Georgia Avenue is another road that heads in the same direction as Colesville but continues into DC. When people went into work by car, these two roads are highly populated by commuters heading to and from work in the nation’s capital.
The left edge of this map is East West Highway. This highway connects the neighboring suburb, Bethesda, with Silver Spring. This is where the building of the new light rail, the purple line, comes in. The goal of the Purple Line light rail is to have a quick form of public transportation that takes people from Bethesda to Silver Spring. When the Purple Line is complete, it will come through East West Highway and stop at the Silver Spring Metro Station. Then the Purple line will head up Wayne Avenue, through the library, and towards the residential areas. In 2015, the Silver Spring Metro opened their Transit Center for buses. This multi leveled bus station serves as a hub for metro buses. This means that there are many bus stations throughout the Downtown Silver Spring area.
