Saturday was the grand opening, and 150 people from the neighborhood and elsewhere in the city passed through the first floor of a rowhouse at 4620 Woodland Ave. to sample food donated by the University of the Sciences and look at what the tool library had to offer.
Eighteen of the visitors signed up, bringing membership to 75, said Michael Froelich, a lawyer with Community Legal Services who lives in the neighborhood and started the ball rolling for the library in spring 2007.
Froelich had seen tool libraries elsewhere in the country - there are about 20 nationwide - "and when I moved back here in 2005, I thought it would be a good idea for this neighborhood."
He distributed flyers, which is how seminarian Benjamin White, who lives across the street from the tool library, became involved.
"I rent, so I don't really need tools. But I work with my church, the Circle of Hope, to rehab houses," White said, "so there's always some sort of tool I need for that.
"I want to see the tool library succeed because I'm eventually going to buy a house, and I'll need it more than I do now," said White, who is on the steering committee and in charge of tool acquisition. "Right now, I'm excited about the idea of sharing."
Morgan Riffer doesn't have to wait.
"I'm in the middle of a home rehab, and I thought belonging to the tool library was a good idea," said Riffer, who works for a nonprofit that does research on education reform.
She bought a rowhouse in the neighborhood two years ago.
"It had a roof that had been leaking for a couple of years when I bought it," she said. "The sellers had lived there for 30 years and had done nothing. I found myself having to buy lots of tools for specific jobs, including chisels for work to replace a piece of a concrete wall."
