Long Overdue Library Branch Finally OKd

You’ve heard of overdue books that were months tardy at the library, but have you heard of a library that was 47 years overdue?

The residents of Harbor City have. In 1950, the people in this neighborhood north of San Pedro were expecting money in the Los Angeles city budget for a library branch in their part of town.

But as is often the case with budgets, the funds for the library branch evaporated and never reappeared.

So you can imagine the reaction when residents learned that the Los Angeles City Council last week found enough money for the Library Department to set up a branch to serve residents in Harbor City and nearby Harbor Gateway.

“I was just so tickled when I heard about it,” said Grace Bradbury, who has lived in Harbor Gateway for 35 years and was one of those who lobbied for a center where residents could check out books, magazines and videotapes. “We’ve waited a long time.”

The library branch is due to open in late spring or early summer now that the City Council has given its approval.

But Rochelle Bullock, who worked hardest to establish a library branch, died in late 1995, at 79, before her dream came true.

“She was the spearhead,” said Mary Ann Cyphers, a community activist in Harbor Gateway who spent many years petitioning for a small library. “We started out as 25 people, but it ended up being just Rochelle.”

For several years after World War II, Harbor City had a library station on 253rd Street. Library stations were smaller than branch libraries, stocking 2,000 to 4,000 books instead of 20,000. The station opened in 1948, but it soon needed to expand to branch size.

By 1950, citizens were told that the badly crowded Harbor City library station might soon be converted into a much larger branch. The change was included in the Library Department’s 1950-51 budget request. But the City Council’s final budget did not include funds for the Harbor City branch. The news made the front page of the now-defunct Harbor City Star weekly.

Instead, the library station was closed in 1954, said Fontayne Holmes, the assistant director of branches for the city Library Department. It was replaced by a bookmobile that visited once a week.

For decades, residents have had to travel 15 minutes to the Torrance or Carson city libraries to check out most books, read back issues of newspapers or research papers.

However, some, like Bullock, would not forget the thought that some day there would be a library in the long, thin Harbor City/Harbor Gateway corridor.

In the early 1980s, she organized a group of 25 people who collected residents’ signatures requesting that something be done to fulfill that 1950 promise. “She just kept chipping away,” Cyphers said.

By 1988, when the Library Department developed its master plan for branch libraries, the Harbor City/Harbor Gateway area was on the list, but not near the top.

“We’ve felt like we were an abandoned child of Los Angeles for a long time,” said Joeann Valle, another library advocate and executive director of the Harbor City/Harbor Gateway Chamber of Commerce.

Bullock lobbied City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represented the area. And when Rudy Svorinich Jr. replaced Flores in 1993, Bullock lobbied him too.

“We did an analysis of the projects and programs that had been promised by the city of Los Angeles over the years and were never delivered,” Svorinich said, referring to his first year representing a district that stretches from Watts to the harbor. “We felt there was a valid reason to put a library in that geographic area because of the 56,000 constituents.”

With city funds scarce, Svorinich and his staff helped obtain a $750,000 community development block grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The block grant pays for the library’s first three years of operation, the books, and the first year of salaries for 5.25 librarian positions. After the first year, the city is responsible for their salaries.

Already, the Library Department is ordering 12,000 to 15,000 volumes for the branch, which will be in four leased suites at Victory Center, a complex of shops at 1555 W. Sepulveda Blvd. It will be the city’s 67th branch library.