The library’s survival hinged on the fact that while its operating costs are covered by the city, the building itself is owned by a private trust. Seizing the moment, the trust’s board of directors used this enforced downtime to make repairs in the old building and to install a library card system for Central Falls alone.

A month later, on Aug. 1, the Adams Memorial Library reopened with limited hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Its reference and checkout desks are now staffed by a rotating band of volunteers, including Jerauld Adams, 41, the board chairman of the library trust, and Thomas Shannahan, 68, a board member and former director of the library. They hung a sign on the front door that said, with some defiance:

“Welcome to YOUR library.”

Mr. Shannahan, bearded and wiry, ran the library from 1989 until 2004, when he resigned amid some political strife; in Central Falls, it seems, there is always political strife. He grew up a couple of blocks from the library, in a building that included the family residence, a rooming house, his father’s bar and a cocktail lounge called the Nut House — at one time a “jumping joint,” he said.

The bar and cocktail lounge are gone, as are the Holy Trinity Catholic church and parochial school that Mr. Shannahan attended as a boy. But the library is still here, he said with pride, as he walked past several patrons hunched before computers aglow with Facebook chatter.

Above him was the building’s dome, a haven to squirrels before its restoration 20 years ago. In the basement below, a modest room grandly called the Rose L. McCormick Memorial Auditorium, named after a beloved librarian and used as a meeting place for various groups. And all around, the paintings of Lorenzo de Nevers, a French-Canadian artist who lived here and whose many subjects included Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.