The Politics of Renaming an Enduring City Symbol
For days thereafter, wherever you found yourself in downtown Los Angeles, there was the raw, uneasy scent of smoke. Once you had grown used to it, you could let yourself wonder where that particular whiff had come from: a scorched chapter of a Jane Austen novel, maybe, or the wind-borne ashes of Edison’s patent design for the phonograph.
Fifteen years ago this week, the library burned--the Central Library, put to the torch by an arsonist. On the timeline of the city’s life, on the map of its psyche, the 1986 fire was horrible and monumental, a civic funeral and a call to arms.
And after the city gave its money and sweat, and the library rose again from its nest of ashes, Los Angeles had graduated from civic indifference to civic recovery. The fine and gleaming Central Library, restored to life and honor, was Los Angeles’ diploma. It became more than a library; it was the city’s mettle and character, proved and measured in paper and brick.
No wonder, then, that when it came time to commemorate the Richard Riordan mayoralty, the Central Library was the place that came to mind, the right building to bear the name of a man who believes in literacy as if it were a commandment.
No wonder, too, that not everyone thinks this is the best of ideas, or the best of times to do it.
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The naming of people and things is a delicate affair. Think of Cape Canaveral, which in the griefstorm after the JFK assassination was impulsively renamed Cape Kennedy, and then, more quietly, restored to Canaveral. Think of the generation of little girls all named “Vanna.”
Cities, having no medals or titles to distribute, can only fix the names of its sometimes impermanent heroes to its permanent edifices. Los Angeles has never been quite sure how to go about this. Its libraries bear the names of authors (like Robert Louis Stevenson), educators (like Mary McLeod Bethune), and an aviator (Amelia Earhart).
And the naming rules have changed over time. First you had to be fairly famous and dead. Then you had to be rich; in the mid-1990s, any million-dollar donor could get his or her name on a branch library. Sometimes you could be rich and dead--the Donald Bruce Kaufman branch in Brentwood was named for a deceased, book-loving businessman whose family kick-started the building fund with big checks.
And then in 1996, Watts insisted its new branch library be named for Alma Reaves Woods, who had labored all her life for books and reading, but who had a better chance of walking to Mars than of earning a million dollars. And so the million-dollar policy was altered.
On Riordan’s 71st birthday this week, the mayor got the grudging gift as the City Council failed to undo the library commission’s decision to put Riordan’s name on the Central Library. (On the same day, the council did vote to name City Hall’s gorgeous council chamber after its late colleague John Ferraro.)
Even Tom Hayden, who ran vehemently against Riordan in 1997, said the other night that while he usually thinks buildings are best named posthumously, “in this case, I think that the mayor, because of his deep involvement with kids and his voluntary efforts to excite kids about reading, is entitled to the dignity of having the library named after him.”
Riordan loves the Central Library. Before the fire, he’d wander the stacks a few times a month, digging the funkiness and serendipity. He has given millions to literacy programs, and he has restored library budgets to some semblance of fiscal health.
But Riordan did try twice, early in his first term, to get one of those insider-financier deals, to sell the Central Library to a subsidiary of Philip Morris, the tobacco company, and then lease it back, and use the money to fatten libraries’ scrawny budgets. It didn’t fly, or we might now be re-renaming the Philip Morris Central Library.
Most opponents believe that, while Riordan may deserve it, the honor should wait, at least until the people voting on this are not commissioners of his choosing. And where will all this naming business end, they wonder; christen in haste, rename at leisure. Remember Cape Kennedy.
Some “concerned staff and patrons” of the Central Library wrote to the library commission to object. Why not, the letter suggested, name the refurbished City Hall after Riordan? “Why,” they asked, “destroy the tradition of learning, education and the universality of the public library for the sake of a tribute to one of the rich and powerful movers and shakers of this city?”
I asked one librarian who signed the letter what she found objectionable, and she groped briefly for a word, and settled on this one: seemly. “It’s just not seemly.”
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Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. Beginning next week, her column will move inside Section B, and will appear on Wednesdays.
