Mark Taper Donates $1 Million to Library : Grant: Officials call it the ‘lead gift’ in a major fund-raising effort. A new auditorium will be named for the donor.

Los Angeles’ historic Central Library, undergoing a major restoration and expansion, will receive a $1-million grant from financier and philanthropist Mark Taper, city officials announced Monday.

In appreciation, officials said, the library’s 250-seat auditorium will feature the familiar Taper name.

The $221-million library expansion and restoration project is expected to be completed in mid-1993, city librarian Elizabeth Martinez Smith said. Half of the Taper grant will be presented when the auditorium opens, and will represent the “lead gift” for a major fund-raising effort for the library, officials said.

The grant from the Mark Taper Foundation is the second largest in the library’s history, following a $2-million donation from the Getty Foundation for the facility’s “save the books” campaign after devastating fires in April, 1986.

The donation was inspired “by the issues of literacy and the multicultural nature of this city,” said Raymond F. Reisler, executive director of the Taper Foundation. The grant, he said, will help address “the terrible plight of people who want to learn and can’t, or don’t have the opportunity; people who want to exchange ideas but don’t have a place to go.”

Taper, 89, a home builder and founder of First Charter Financial Corp., parent company of American Savings & Loan, did not attend a press conference on the Bunker Hill Steps where Mayor Tom Bradley and other officials expressed gratitude.

In a press release, Taper said: “I see the library as more than a building filled with books. It is the hub for community interaction, allowing all types of people, from a myriad of backgrounds, to search for knowledge. . . . Much of that interaction will take place in this beautiful new auditorium and I am very pleased to have my name associated with it.”

Taper created his philanthropic foundation 39 years ago. In Los Angeles, his charity is memorialized in such facilities as the Music Center’s Mark Taper Forum, the Mark Taper West District Headquarters of the American Red Cross, the Mark Taper Hall of Economics and Finance at the California Museum of Science and Industry, two Taper galleries at the county Museum of Art and the Mark Taper Building at the Jewish Home for the Aging.

The planned Mark Taper Auditorium was described as an intimate, multitiered room seating 250 in a semi-circular layout. Library officials say it will be used for a range of activities, from theatrical performances and lectures to income tax assistance.

Betty Gay, the Central Library’s chief librarian, said foot traffic at temporary library facilities at 433 S. Spring St. has increased steadily since its opening, and now has about 70% of the patronage of the historic facility.