I’m going to vote Yes on Measure PL, the bazillion-dollar Pasadena library bond, to seismically shore up and allow to reopen one of the most gorgeous and important buildings and community centers ever created in the San Gabriel Valley, Myron Hunt’s Central Library on East Walnut Street.
But I do so with reservations about the hopped-up design I’ve seen in architect’s renderings. It’s too much. We don’t need to change the building. I don’t want to lose this opportunity to fund the second century of a linchpin of the city’s grand Civic Center, one of the greatest groups of public buildings in the nation. But I don’t want to use the seismic problems that make a construction project necessary in order to allow people back into the library to work and to read and to recreate as an excuse to go to town on an interior redesign I don’t think is necessary.
It’s already a really nice looking place. That’s the point. That’s why we love it. The entry hall alone — it’s like walking into the cathedral in Siena, a massive space that inspires awe just by being there. It’s perfect. Not in need of an update.
But one of the computer-aided renderings I’ve seen shows a pair of two big new white columns in the middle of the space, and, perhaps churlishly, I don’t like them. There have got to be other solutions to make the place earthquake-safe.
And, OK, it’s not really a bazillion. It’s $195 million. Lotta scratch, still.
And someone on the design team clearly has been in the British-style ground-floor stacks of the big room in the Huntington Library that looks like the reading room of an earl in the Cotswolds, with a mezzanine lined with books and those cool gliding library ladders.
It’s cool. I’m just questioning whether we need the change.
From Gruen, the architectural firm: “Given the need to remove the added book stacks in order to retrofit the building’s structural walls supporting the stacks, the space has been redesigned to provide the required number of book shelves in a manner that provides more open floor space for programming use, returns the space to its original grandeur and reveals the original skylights of the building that had been blocked by the stacks. Named the Circulation Hall, it is a high-volume space that replaces the low-ceilinged book stack area. The Circulation Hall has two levels of mezzanines above the main floor ringed with built-in book stacks and a large opening in the floor which opens to the Lower Level (basement level) of book stacks. Sunlight from the existing skylights above provides natural light throughout, including down to the Lower Level.”
So, here I am arguing for original intent and design, and it turns out this would be a return to more natural light. Which is cool. But cool at a cost.
And then: “Another example of providing increased flexibility in the use of space while improving operational services of the library is the simple move of the circulation desk from the Great Hall of the Library to the Circulation Hall. Doing so provides unimpeded space for community events in the Great Hall and makes both entrances of the library readily visible for staff working at the circulation desk.”
Which also sounds cool. And I’m glad that the move of the (really big) old circulation desk would allegedly be “simple.” But nothing is ever simple in government work.
I don’t want to be a curmudgeon here. And I was involved on a community advisory committee early on in this process made up of people who love the library and want to see it restored. I am absolutely not one of those who are complaining about using (large) sums of public money to fix up a building that is hopelessly outmoded in the 21st century because supposedly people don’t go to libraries anymore. They do, and librarians have pivoted to provide many other community services beyond books and being the pre-digital Google search engine. My biggest hope is that the new, safe library becomes even more of a community center for all kinds of events than it ever was, with less red tape for citizens to be able to reserve the citizen-owned space gratis for more readings, more music, more parties, more fun.
I am also not one of those Pasadenans who are voting a curmudgeonly No because there are in fact, wonderfully, 10 branch libraries spread throughout the city. They’re fine. And they are not Central.
I’m just going to vote Yes and then lobby for any big changes to the grand old library to be given the kibosh. The new design is just a picture inside a computer, and can be modified.
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