Woman Turns 110-Year-Old Dying Tree Into A Free Library For The Neighbourhood

By Luke Miller,

Woman Turns 110-Year-Old Dying Tree Into A Library For The Neighborhood

We are living in a new age of information where everything is available at the click of a button. With this in mind, there is nothing that comes quite as close to reading off a page, feeling the paper pass through your hands and the smell of a book.

Maybe this is was a the forefront of librarian Sharalee Armitage Howard’s mind when she took a decaying 110-year-old tree and turned it into a free community library.

Armitage started the project In collaboration with Nonprofit Little Free Library. LFL is working to keep our love of books alive by “inspiring a love of reading, building community, and sparking creativity by fostering neighbourhood book exchanges around the world.” Currently, there are 75,000 of these mini-libraries in 88 countries across the globe!

Sharlee told Bored Panda “Someone willing to take the time to give new life to a stump would never cut down a healthy tree to do it,” she continued, “It was dropping HUGE branches for years onto the sidewalk and street (even without windy weather). We were really worried about someone getting hurt. One finally hit our son’s car.” “The average lifespan of a cottonwood tree is merely 40-50 years… so it got to live more than twice that already!”

The tree was carved from the inside, and kitted out with a roof and pretty lighting, giving it a true fairytale feel. Here are some of the pictures to look at: