One for the Books : 1967 Dream of Branch Library at Last Becomes a Reality

The sign appeared as if from nowhere, pounded into a dirt lot near Platt Avenue and Victory Boulevard. It said, “Future Site of a Los Angeles Public Library,” or words to that effect. No one quite remembers.

The year was 1967 and this neighborhood of mostly young couples welcomed a library for themselves and their children. A few years passed, however, and the lot remained empty. Some people suspected a hoax.

“When I was a little girl, we would walk past there and see that sign,” Anne Olivier recalled. “We would wonder when they were going to build the library.”

Saturday, the Platt Branch Library will finally open, with Olivier as one of its librarians. She will greet neighbors who long ago refused to give up when the city ran short of construction funds. In an effort that spanned three decades, they pestered elected officials, petitioned for special taxes and applied for federal grants. They looked into buying portable buildings and even raising a tent to house the library.

The goal of opening a library branch may seem anachronistic in an age of cable television and the Internet. Yet, in Chinatown, the community raised more than $350,000 to help pay for a two-story library. In Los Feliz, neighbors recently persuaded a landlord to lease his storefront to the city, which turned it into a small but needed branch.

“This is the history of public libraries in Los Angeles,” said Fontayne Holmes, assistant director of branch libraries. “The very first library was started by a group of concerned citizens and this has continued to be a populace-based system.”

And nowhere have people struggled longer than in Woodland Hills. Through a string of defeats, they persisted. Only after a real estate boom loosened voters’ purse strings, and the 1986 Central Library fire caught the public eye, did Platt library get built.

“It’s amazing how those people stuck with it,” said Willa Kurtz, a neighborhood resident and former city librarian. “It sort of restores your faith that there are people who still read.”

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The West Valley was still growing in the 1960s, with developments taking over open land at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains and new homes drawing families from across the city.

“It was a great deal,” recalled Michaella Johnson, who arrived in 1966. “You got a lower interest loan because they were tract houses and you could get four or five bedrooms for $37,000.”

The newly built Topanga Plaza attracted crowds on weekends. Lockhurst Drive School ran double sessions to accommodate all its children.

The community became a prime candidate for a new library.

Los Angeles Public Library coffers held a surplus at the time, so administrators decided to buy the Platt lot and several other properties, then seek money for construction. In 1967, they went to voters with a $57.8-million bond issue. The measure failed, as did another in 1968.

But the sign remained at Platt and Victory. Work crews regularly cleared weeds from the property. As far as residents knew, their library would be built.

“One of my kids came home and said, ‘We don’t know how we’re supposed to check out books from that sign,’ ” Johnson recalled. “But we all thought it would come soon.”

Not until 1974 did PTA members at Lockhurst begin asking questions. They learned that the project had been shelved, but officials offered a deal: If the community paid for construction, the city would pay to run the library. Sheldon and Sharon Schuster, who lived nearby, organized their neighbors into the Friends of the Platt Library.

The next year, the group proposed a special assessment district so that residents could raise the money themselves. Donald Lorenzen, the area’s councilman at the time, supported the idea.

A survey showed only a quarter of Platt neighbors favored the special tax. Supporters claimed that the questionnaires had been sent to the wrong area; subsequently they collected thousands of signatures in favor of the assessment. Lorenzen, however, pulled out, and the effort died.

“I figured that the whole thing had fallen through,” said Marcia Weingarten, a neighborhood girl at the time.

Still, the Friends of the Library persisted. In 1977, Joy Picus won election to the City Council, and Sharon Schuster, a longtime campaigner, became one of her aides. The project again gained political momentum.

“When I took office,” Picus said, “I told people that we were going to build that library.”

Then, in 1978, came Proposition 13.

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According to an apocryphal tale, the Alexandria Library, the most celebrated library of antiquity, burned down when Julius Caesar attacked the city in 48 BC.

In fact, the collection was probably lost over the course of centuries. But the more dramatic story of its demise came to symbolize the fall of the Egyptian city. When books burn, a culture’s identity burns with them.

Christian monasteries promoted this notion--the importance of libraries--by maintaining collections throughout Europe. According to “The Discoverers,” by Daniel J. Boorstin, a 12th-Century manuscript of St. Augustine and Ambrose bore this warning:

“This book belongs to (the monastery of) St. Mary of Robert’s Bridge, whosoever shall steal it, or sell it, or in any way alienate it from this house, or mutilate it, let him be forever accursed. Amen.”

Against this historic backdrop, a small announcement appeared in a Los Angeles newspaper in 1872. Residents were invited to discuss the establishment of “a place where a cultivated person may go for books of reference or standard library works.”

More than 200 people attended the meeting, according to “The Light of Learning,” a history book published by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. John G. Downey, a land dealer soon to be state governor, let the nascent library use several rooms in a building he owned on Temple Street. A month later, the reading rooms opened with 750 donated volumes.

Though most East Coast and Southern libraries had evolved from grand private collections, the Los Angeles Public Library remained small for many years. Not until 1911 did construction begin on the first branches, thanks to a $210,000 donation from Andrew Carnegie.

Los Angeles libraries continue to rely on charity. The system receives $10.50 per resident in city funding, according to a 1994 report. By contrast, Boston spends more than $33 per capita on its libraries. Seattle spends in excess of $43.

“There’s never enough money in the budget,” said Johnson, who went to work for the library in 1975 and oversees bookmobiles that visit Valley schools and neighborhoods. “It has to come from grass-roots efforts.”

In Chinatown, in the early 1980s, residents protested when library administrators said no branch was necessary so close to Central Library.

“The community persisted,” said Robert Reagan, a library spokesman. “And now that has become one of the busiest branches in the system.”

In the same way, residents of Little Tokyo campaigned for 12 years before persuading the city to open a branch in a neighborhood church. The community raised $32,000 for shelving, furniture and equipment.

But 12 years’ work resulted in no such progress at Platt. In 1986, the lot remained empty. The sign, by then covered with graffiti, was taken away.

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By the mid-1980s, the Valley accounted for six of the city’s 10 busiest libraries. For Joy Picus, the Platt branch assumed increasing political importance.

“I promised it,” she said, “and no group can be counted upon to descend on you more powerfully or more articulately than the library people.”

Picus and her constituents looked into renovating the closed Highlander Road School, but found the idea costly. They applied for federal grants, but were rejected because the community was too affluent.

“There was an ebb and flow to the work,” Schuster explained. “As we got a new idea, things would heat up. When it was defeated, things quieted down for a while.”

Just as the group seemed to run out of ideas, the Southern California real estate market soared. Then, in April, 1986, fire swept through the Central Library, destroying about 370,000 volumes.

In City Council chambers, the flames rekindled an interest in library funding. Picus joined Zev Yaroslavsky in promoting a bond measure to pay for the Downtown and suburban libraries. With a strong economy, they believed the time was right to ask property owners for more money.

The 1988 measure narrowly lost. But five months later, librarians campaigned door-to-door and a similar measure passed. Of the $53.4 million raised for libraries, more than $20 million was earmarked for Platt, as well as branches in North Hills and Porter Ranch.

While most Platt supporters celebrated, some regarded the victory as too long overdue. Ruth R. Bromund complained that her kids had grown and gone away. She and her husband, nearing retirement, were considering moving too.

“This library is a whole generation too late,” Bromund wrote in an opinion piece in The Times. “Wherever we go this time, I’ll make sure a library is already nearby. I’m not going to wait another generation.”

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Saturday’s grand opening comes a few years late for Kurtz, too. Kurtz retired from the library system in 1989 after serving as the senior librarian at the Encino and Canoga Park branches.

“I used to tell my supervisor that I’d be interested in working in the Platt library if it was ever built,” she said. “Well, that never happened on my watch.”

Unlike Bromund, however, Kurtz plans to remain in the West Valley and is helping Sharon Schuster coordinate the Friends of the Platt Library, which has swelled to more than 200 members.

“Now that the library is here, I’m not sure that everyone will actually use it,” Schuster said. “But this community recognizes the value of a library.”

She and her husband have donated a puppet stage for the new facility. Weingarten is leading a campaign to buy additional books and computers for a homework center.

The Platt Branch could use the help. While architecturally striking, it is small and sits wedged between a fast-food restaurant and a concrete wash. Its collection could hardly be deemed comprehensive.

Nevertheless, at tomorrow’s ceremony, neighbors will congratulate each other on a job well done.

“Of course, we wanted this for our kids,” Schuster said. “At least now we can bring our grandchildren.”