Downtown, the Once and Future L.A. : Central Library: Seven years ago today, it was in flames. This fall, it reopens bigger and better.

A year ago, Los Angeles erupted in flames that none of us who saw them will ever forget; the riots fundamentally and forever changed the city. But April 29 also marks the anniversary of an earlier conflagration: in 1986, an arsonist set fire to the L.A. Central Library.

I was there that morning, going over plans for the addition. The alarm went off shortly before 11 a.m. By the time the blaze was contained seven hours later, almost 400,000 books had been destroyed and another 600,000 were seriously damaged by water. I remember looking up at the ceiling of the rotunda at 5 that afternoon. The stencils and murals were hidden behind a cloud of steam. Other murals throughout the building were covered with soot which, it turned out, protected them from the water almost the way varnish would have.

Over the next few days, more than 1,400 volunteers worked around the clock to save the water-soaked books. Conservators from the Getty Museum arrived to consult on the stencils, murals and other art works. For weeks, there was a low-key panic of activity.

On Oct. 3--seven years, a second library fire and several earthquakes after that April morning, and 12 years after planning for expansion and renovation began--the Central Library will again open its doors to all the people of Los Angeles: more than doubled in size, dramatically restored, with a new public park outside its door.

Los Angeles Central Library is the third-largest public library in the United States, after New York and Chicago city libraries. Designed by Bertram Goodhue, it was built in 1926 at 630 W. Fifth St. on the site of the old Normal School, which had moved to the Westside to become what is now UCLA.

At the time, there were those who thought the library ought to be on the Westside as well; this was the era when even downtown churches were being torn down to be rebuilt on Westside locations. But those who wanted a downtown civic center--with the library its linchpin--prevailed.

During the 1970s, when it was clear the Central Library needed enlarging and modernizing, some argued that the city ought to tear down the old building, build a 70-story office tower in its place and use the revenue to rebuild--again, on the Westside. And again, the longer-term vision for a downtown library won out.

For nearly 70 years, the Central Library has been the city’s most emphatically democratic institution. Anyone who wants to may walk through its doors. The Central Library houses one of the nation’s finestcollections of rare books--including William Shakespeare’s 1684 “Fourth Folio” and Francisco Palou’s 1787 book about Father Junipero Serra’s voyage from Mexico--fortunately, spared from the flames. It has reading collections in 28 languages and language-learning resources in nearly 500.

But the library is more than a warehouse for books; it is a place where anyone with a question can come to look for an answer. People come to use its out-of-town phone books, its car-repair manuals, its resume-writing guides. The library is the place many children and adults first touch a computer keyboard. The new building will have room for activities such as children’s puppet shows, music and lectures.

As an architect, I am perhaps more aware than many people that cities are built one difficult step at a time. I remember wondering that day in 1986 why, if somebody were just going to burn it down, we were bothering to renovate the library at all. I wondered the same thing last year, when, only blocks away, people were setting fires of another kind.

But the truth is, cities have been burning for thousands of years. And when they have, the people who care about them have usually rebuilt them.

Great public libraries demonstrate that the people who built them care about their city. To me, the Central Library is physical proof that the people of Los Angeles believe in its future. As we continue to rebuild, it seems appropriate that this vibrant institution--one that brings us together, ties us to our past and opens doors to our future--will soon reopen.

As its architect, I am proud of the new library building. As a citizen of Los Angeles, I am even prouder of the hope it represents.