A Proud Chapter

The Los Feliz Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, which opens April 8, is the kind of project that is all too rare in Los Angeles: a civic building that lives up to the rhetoric public officials regularly offer on the importance of education to social well-being.

Built on a budget of $2.7 million, the 10,000-square-foot building at the corner of Hillhurst and Franklin avenues reminds us of the stature libraries once held in our communities. Along with providing a home for 40,000 books, it will serve a host of public functions. A community room will be available for local events such as book fairs and lecture series. A teen study center and children’s storytelling room will provide a refuge for young students.

As architecture, there are no startling new ideas here, no truly breathtaking moments. But the building succeeds because it fuses disparate functions with a genuine sense of communal purpose. Designed by Los Angeles-based Barton Phelps & Assoc., most recently known for the renovation of UCLA’s Royce Hall, the library cleverly (perhaps too cleverly) blends various moments from Los Feliz’s rich architectural legacy--from late Modernism to hints of the Spanish Mediterranean style. More important, the building balances the two seemingly conflicting realities of the urban and suburban landscapes--the desire to reinforce the emerging pedestrian spine that runs along Hillhurst while accepting Los Angeles as a city of cars. The design shows how good architecture can strengthen and bind a community’s fabric.

The library stands amid the typical urban landscape of the contemporary western city: Two mini-malls and a gas station occupy the intersection’s other corners. The community room faces Franklin Avenue while the reading room extends along Hillhurst, with the main pedestrian entry set cozily between the two forms. By separating the program into two parts, the community center can function as an independent building, sealed off from the nearby reading rooms. Together they embrace a garden court and amphitheater at the rear of the building. The idea was to create two equally prominent entryways--one from the street, the other from the parking lot.

Taking his cue from the context, Phelps pulled the main pedestrian entry away from the corner of the site, which is marked by a droopy deodar cedar (an oddly sad-looking tree standing against the building’s geometric forms). The tall, lantern-shaped top of the teen reading room frames the entry on one side. Along Hillhurst, four large angular windows pierce the building’s blank, stucco facade, with diagonal views into the main reading room. The strong geometry of the forms gives the building both a monumental presence and an air of serenity without closing it off from its context.

But the design also pays tribute to a city built around the cult of the car. Viewed from the rear parking lot, the structure literally folds in on itself, embracing the garden on three sides and creating an intimate public space. At one end, the tower-like form of the children’s reading room punctuates the garden and overlooks a series of shallow steps that will serve as an informal amphitheater. Imagine children here reading books under the shade of a tree, or locals escaping their daily drudgery to sit and eat a quiet lunch.

Inside, the library is zoned according to age and function. The main reading room is arranged along a narrow central spine, with a series of pyramid-shaped skylights that serve as giant light funnels, bathing the reading tables in a warm glow. The children’s reading room is the library’s most intimate, curling around one side of the main room, while the teen center is the library’s most public, punctuating the axis’ other end and overlooking Franklin Avenue through large windows.

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This is not revolutionary architecture, just thoughtful planning. The spaces are generous and beautifully lighted. There is an abundance of corners to retreat to for reading or gossiping. Views are carefully manipulated to connect the work inside with the broader landscape. The main reading room’s windows, for example, are canted out 22 degrees to focus on views of the Griffith Observatory and the Santa Monica Mountains above.

Nonetheless, architecture like this is rare. It has been more than a decade since Frank Gehry completed his Frances Howard Goldwyn Library, a short drive away in Hollywood. Gehry’s project is among the last significant library building built by the city of Los Angeles. It is a relatively straightforward design, its forms evoking delicately stacked sugar cubes. Its large second-story reflecting pools give visitors a sense of floating above the chaos below.

That few libraries of comparable importance have been built since says much about the state of civic architecture in Los Angeles during the intervening decade. The renovation of downtown’s Central Library, completed in 1993 and originally built in the ‘20s, should have been something to celebrate. Beautifully restored, set amid a substantial and much-used urban park, Bertram Goodhue’s original design was a wonderful token of that era; it is a building whose architecture evokes genuine confidence in the art form’s civic mission.

But the renovation project was also a failure of sorts. The library’s overblown addition, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, does not live up to the civic ideals of the original building. It is a Postmodern pastiche that lacks substance, its main hall an eight-story atrium that leads nowhere.

Phelps’ design turns such thinking on its head. It looks back to history not for superficial images but for a sense of public mission. There are historical references here--most notably to the sensitive massing of the works of celebrated Southern California architect Irving Gill and the humanistic values of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Like Aalto, Phelps seeks a balance between communal spirit and private contemplation. It is the least we should expect of our civic landmarks. Welcome to the neighborhood.