The Central Library

Los Angeles Central Library grew from a collection of donated books and six-month-old newspapers begun in 1844 in a town of fewer than 1,500 people, then spent decades moving among donated quarters, old City Hall, and a department store as its holdings overflowed each location. The city bought the new library site, the old state Normal School, for one dollar and chose architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, who redesigned his original rounded dome into a pyramidal tower with more room for books and crowned it with the light of learning torch. Its features included Dean Cornwell's murals of California history, a lighted globe adorned with zodiac symbols, black Belgian marble sphinxes at the north staircase, and an inscription declaring, “in the world of affairs we live in our own age; in books we live in all ages.” Though envisioned in the 1920s as a home for a million books, by October 1931 it loaned out that many in a single month, and by the 1950s it was antiquated and severely overcrowded. After more than 20 years of studies and votes over whether to tear it down, restore it, or sell it, two arson fires in 1986, the first on April 29, destroyed 370,000 books and documents and were followed by a broad volunteer and civic effort to salvage surviving books and raise millions for restoration. The restored library gained a dramatic new wing with an eight-story atrium built partly below ground, reproduced historic design elements, and redesigned grounds called the Maguire Gardens, while its history also includes figures such as Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Charles F. Lummis, and Tessa Kelso, whose most significant contribution was abolishing borrowing fees and making the library a free service.

Los Angeles, California · United States