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The Los Angeles Central Library

The Los Angeles Central Library consists of a nearly-destroyed building that was elaborately rehabilitated and its expansive addition. The choice to rehabilitate was made on the grounds that it was an historic building worthy of preservation. The building was held to have symbolic importance, to make a vital aesthetic contribution, and to provide badly needed public space to the heavily developed downtown area. The facility was expanded with an eight-story wing that houses the great majority of the library's public functions. The attempt to replicate most practical and decorative features of the public spaces in the old building has produced a very large landmark that also serves a valuable public function.

The Los Angeles Public Library system's Central Library building is located in downtown Los Angeles on a large two-block plot running west to east between Flower and Grand Streets, bordered on the north by Fifth Street, and abutted at the center of its south side by Hope Street. The original building was designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue and built in 1922-26. Overcrowding, some dilapidation, earthquake damage, and two serious 1986 fires that gutted most of the structure produced a great deal of support for demolishing the building and beginning again with a new structure on the same site. Plans had already been initiated for adapting the Goodhue building by constructing an extension, but the fires and the most extensive earthquake damage in the building's history--all within two years--made clearing the site seem like the more practical alternative.

The Library system, civic planners, and preservationists objected to the idea of demolishing the Goodhue building and the Library system made the reconstruction-renovation of the old building the centerpiece of its fundraising efforts. The plans for the addition were radically altered and the overall plan for the Central Library was revised to include tota...

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The Los Angeles Central Library. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 18:47, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708277.html