STRUCTURES : Museum Basks in Its Classical Glory : Carnegie Is Renowned for Its Greek Style and the Importance of Its Art Collection

There it stands, with its Greek classicism intact, beaming with bright white-walled authority. Ringed by towering columns that uphold ornamented pediments, the Carnegie Art Museum stands out in its downtown Oxnard neighborhood on South C Street.

The question remains: Is it a jewel of the city or a jewel out of context? Is the Carnegie an example of elegance set amid mediocrity, or a case of historical and stylistic irrelevance?

At this point, the Carnegie has a singular importance in the realm of local culture, as one of the consistently important art venues in Ventura County. Specializing in art from Southern California, past and present, the museum, for the most part, uses its ample spaces well.

On a larger historical scale, though, the structure’s importance has less to do with the art than the Carnegie. Built in 1906 as part of the Carnegie Library chain, the building is one of the few Carnegie structures still standing.

Historical preservationists can be thanked for that--just as the rustic Carnegie library built in 1903 in San Luis Obispo now serves as a historical museum. Oxnard’s Carnegie building, which ceased being a library in 1963 when a new one was built, was designated as a County Historical landmark in 1971. For many years the site of the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce, it has been home to the city’s art museum since 1980.

Carnegie, the mythic man behind it all, was a multimillionaire steel baron from Scotland, who, around the turn of the century, began divesting his fortune in philanthropic causes. One of his goals was to champion the creation of free libraries around the land.

He wrote that “we have nothing to fear in our great Republic because of our Free School System and the Free Libraries. A reading people are of course an active people, full of new ideas and anxious to test them, which ensures peaceful development. . . . “

News of Carnegie’s offer to fund libraries spread quickly, and reached the young, burgeoning sugar beet town of Oxnard. Mayor Richard B. Haydock and City Atty. Isaac W. Stewart spearheaded the drive to take advantage of the Carnegie challenge, which required the individual cities to provide sites and promises of ongoing city support.

Prominent early figures in Oxnard’s history figured into the realization of the plan. Henry T. Oxnard, one of the brothers after whom the city was named, donated the site. Achille Levy, the banker, was one of those who agreed to fund the furnishing of the library.

James Bertram, the reputedly irascible executor of Carnegie’s library program, agreed to give $12,000 toward the building, which ultimately cost $16,016.

Los Angeles architect Franklin P. Burnham was commissioned to design the classical structure, built by longtime local contractor Thomas Carroll. Building went slowly, in part because of the shortage of building materials in California following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

When completed in 1907, the Oxnard Courier called it “a stately monument to art and literature . . . dedicated to the people in a simple yet beautifully impressive manner.”

All told, 1,679 libraries, at least partly funded by Carnegie, were built in the United States between 1886 and 1919, 142 of them in California.

As the program went on, Carnegie and Bertram responded to architectural criticism and paid closer attention to the look of the libraries being erected around the country.

Had Oxnard’s Greek palace been planned several years later, it might have been vetoed by Carnegie, who suddenly decried the turning of libraries into “Greek temples.”

Architectural tastes shift with the tides of fashion and individual perspective. What might be considered majestic and “a stately monument” by one observer is a cliche to another.

An 86-year-old structure such as the Carnegie, so shamelessly and unapologetically classicist and retro, is bound to get mixed reviews. In the 1990s, it sits in lonely, lovingly maintained glory, a quaint relic from a time when classical revival was serious business.

Compare the former library, for instance, with the new, third Oxnard library, completed last year. The new building gently embraces ideals set forth by post-modernist thinking.

Here, the monumentality is downplayed with supple, sculpted forms. Although larger than the Carnegie, it makes a more graceful pact with its huge property. Humbler in size but more pompous in its general impression, the Carnegie speaks in lofty tones.

Whatever your opinion of the place, it is an impressive edifice. At a time when generic and corporate architecture dots the landscape, and numbs the senses to our surroundings, a little heroic Greek ostentation never hurts.

In the face of it, indifference is not an option.

Details

* WHAT: Carnegie Art Museum.

* WHERE: 424 S. C St., Oxnard.

* WHEN: Museum hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.

* ETC: 385-8157.