Post-Riots: Junipero Serra Library Branch Finds a Home

Father Junipero Serra’s bid for canonization has been languishing in the Vatican for almost 60 years now. He remains a controversial figure in California history, but if his sponsors need any additional miracles, they could do worse than to look at his namesake library on Figueroa St. in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

While everybody else in town was boarding up their windows in anticipation of a second round of riots, the Junipero Serra branch of the L.A. Public Library (L.A.P.L.) was reopening its doors. Burned out of an already temporary site last spring, on April 2 the Serra branch welcomed the first book-starved patrons back inside its rebuilt mini-mall home at 43rd and Figueroa.

The Junipero Serra branch did not always serve the community from between a 99-cent store and a “$1 Chinese Food Tax Included.” The original branch building, resembling a small, whitewashed mission from Father Serra’s own statewide branch system, stands just across the Harbor Freeway from its prefab progeny.

Quiet side streets across from schools were once thought ideal locations for libraries, too. But Serra’s unprepossessing storefront on busy Figueroa “does a lot better circulation than (the original building) ever did,” Senior Librarian Camille Carter admits. Library plans now focus on finding a suitable site for a new permanent building.

A genial woman with a ready laugh, Carter’s been with Serra since 1979. She probably has the seniority to request a transfer but wouldn’t trade the Serra branch for any of its plusher suburban counterparts. “Here, the patrons are satisfied when you give them something. Out there, they’re tremendously demanding.”

On a recent spring afternoon, though, it would be hard to imagine a busier neighborhood library than Serra. Children abound--more over by the computers and videos than Carter might like, but plenty of others nearer the books and magazines.

Carter points out an adult, too, a member of the newly formed Friends of the Library group. The Junipero Serra Library actually numbers among the city’s more flush branches in this time of budgetary crisis, thanks to the Library Restoration Campaignled by director/choreographer Debbie Allen.

Their generosity has contributed to a new and growing collection of 15,000 books, videos and periodicals in both English and Spanish. The branch also annexed a neighboring bakery, providing room for new shelving, furniture, computer equipment, and floor-to-ceiling windows that fill the children’s reading area with abundant natural light.

Of her new customers, Carter says, “They’re drawn by the way this place looks. I’m not going to say a fire does anybody a favor, but in terms of the outcome, they have a better library than they had before.”