Imagine This--a Refurbished, Expanded Main Library

If they hadn’t used their imaginations, the donors and friends who toured the Los Angeles Central Library on Tuesday would have seen only exposed steel girders, sprinkler heads and elevator shafts--the guts of what will soon be a rehabilitated, expanded facility.

But with the help of Betty Gay, many saw something more. Gay, the library director, led visitors through the 530,000-square-foot building as if she had a detailed blueprint in her head, directing their attention to as yet nonexistent terra-cotta columns, to invisible escalators and to colorfully patterned carpets that are not yet under foot.

In a paved area marked only by exposed steel supports, Gay saw a children’s courtyard, complete with murals depicting favorite bedtime stories. Nearby, at one end of an empty sky-lit atrium, Gay envisioned a clock that will announce the hour with synthesized music instead of chimes.

“It’ll play the top 13 songs from the Billboard charts--a different song for each hour, and one for midnight and for noon,” she said. The synthesizer will be programmed on the day the library reopens and will play those songs forever, she said, as a monument to the library’s rebirth.

Since two arson fires ravaged the library and destroyed 375,000 books in 1986, city officials and private sponsors have worked steadily to raise funds to replace the lost books and to complete a $211.4-million renovation at 5th Street and Grand Avenue. Now that the library is in the final phase of construction--with a grand opening scheduled for Oct. 2, 1993--Gay and 150 other library staffers and friends gathered Tuesday to prepare for the future.

At a luncheon at the Biltmore Hotel across from the library, Mayor Tom Bradley applauded Los Angelenos for volunteering their time and money to rebuild the facility. Because of their hard work, he said, Tuesday marked the end of the successful Save the Books campaign, which raised more than $10 million to restock the library’s collections.

Before benefactors had time to close their checkbooks, however, Lodwrick M. Cook, the chief executive officer of Arco and the Save the Books co-chairman, launched a broader fund-raising effort--a newly formed Library Foundation of Los Angeles that will benefit the entire public library system, including its 63 branches, its bookmobiles and its support services.

“You thought this was a free lunch, didn’t you?” Cook asked the luncheon guests, nodding toward Evelyn Hoffman, the library’s new development director.

“She’s looking around the room,” he warned, “and seeing who’s here.”

Many of those in the room had already contributed. One lawyer whose firm was among the patrons named in a lengthy list of donors said he had attended the lunch with the expectation that he would be “touched” again--meaning his firm would be asked to donate some more. But after a tour of the building, he said, he was convinced that the project was worth supporting.

“The old library was tired,” he said. “This is better than ever.”

Unlike the old library, the new facility will be air-conditioned and completely accessible to the handicapped. It will be double its former size and will include state-of-the-art sprinkler and security systems.

Its brightly painted ceilings, some blackened by the destructive blazes, have been refurbished with help from the Getty Trust. Its lighting is being redesigned.

Seemingly, only the library’s staff--which has toiled over the last six years to salvage books and to set up a temporary facility--will remain the same.