Crafty Wednesdays at the Fumo Family Library

Crafty Wednesdays are back at the Fumo Family Library on Wednesday, October 21, from 3:30 to 4:30 PM. It's a crafting session open to teens, children, and caregivers, and you don't need to register in advance—just show up. The library provides all the supplies, so you can walk in and get started without bringing anything from home.

The session takes place in the meeting room of the Fumo Family Library, located at 2437 South Broad Street (at Porter and Broad) in South Philadelphia. The branch is a bright yellow building on South Broad, right next to the South Philadelphia Charter School for Performing Arts, which opened in 1999. The site has a long history: the area was once small farms and marshlands, and the land had been owned by the same Swedish family for more than 200 years. Broad Street itself was named by William Penn.

The branch has gone by three names over its life. It opened on November 24, 1914, as a brick Carnegie library called the South Philadelphia Branch; it later became the Ritner Children's Library, the only library in the system exclusively for children; and it was finally renamed the Fumo Family Branch after a South Philadelphia family. If you look up above the circulation desk, you'll see Waiting for the Train, a mural by Marie Garafano.

These sessions are part of the Free Library of Philadelphia's LEAP (Learning, Exploring, Art, Play) programming, which puts on more than 28,000 programs for all ages every year. Crafty Wednesdays run on Wednesdays from 3:30 to 4:30 PM, with this particular session on Wednesday, October 21, at 3:30 PM.