The Caretaker’s Cottage at Grand View Cemetery, a 123-year-old landmark at the crest of Salisbury Street and for the past three years a local history outpost for the West Lafayette Public Library, will close Nov. 15.
The move comes after the library board voted unanimously two weeks ago to not renew a $1-a-year lease for 2027 with the city, which bought the property in 2017 and renovated it in the years that followed.
Instead, the West Lafayette Public Library will consolidate its local history collections and displays at the main library at the corner of Chauncey Avenue and Columbia Street, as it deals with uncertain revenue under property tax reforms approved by the Indiana General Assembly in Senate Bill 1 in 2025 continue to roll out.
Marra Honeywell, West Lafayette Public Library director, said that at a time when staffing was being scaled back over the past few years, among other operational cuts she said have been done quietly, the library board decided it couldn’t justify staffing and keeping the lights on at a second location for another year.
“This has just been so hard,” Honeywell said. “It’s an amazing space, a really special place. But it was just stretching us. … We’ve been working on right sizing our budget into our building for a while now, and we had a long way to go. We had to ask: Can we keep the cottage going?”