Old and new in central libraries

Citation

Holt, G. (2003), "Old and new in central libraries", The Bottom Line, Vol. 16 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2003.17016dab.001

Old and new in central libraries

Keywords: Public libraries, Buildings, Local government

A hundred years ago, thousands of towns that wanted to have a respectable civic landscape, among them St Louis and Des Moines, built big central district public libraries. Civic leaders regarded such institutions as necessary parts of their community's cultural statement: a city needed a central library for the same reason it needed a railroad depot or city hall or county court house. It was the way a town showed it was going places. To use a term of the times: "it was the progressive thing to do".

Once built, a lot of civic leaders forgot about these institutions. They regarded them as pleasant places in which children got their annual library inoculation during a school tour, or as places where stay-at-home moms checked out popular books. And at election time or for civic ceremonies, the leaders had one or another of the institutions dusted off as backdrops for patriotic speeches.

One aspect of civic marginalization was low levels of funding. Certainly that was the case for the St Louis Public Library system that is my work home. When I took over at St Louis Public Library in 1987, it had been living off exactly the same income for the previous 17 years. In the meantime, inflation had eroded 58 per cent of its spending power.

Because of this situation, the St Louis library board was not thinking about a renaissance, but which branch to close next. Old attitudes can change, however. And in no educational sector has the shift been more dramatic than in the role of central libraries. This change began in the private sector.

Through the last two decades, as old inner cities witnessed the exit of big corporations, banks, department stores and high-class boutique retailers, some civic leaders and elected officials began to look at old central city libraries, art museums and historical societies with new eyes.

They came to regard these institutions as urban assets to be developed, expanded or even built anew as cultural statements for the twenty-first century. In cities across America, an institutional building boom began. In many cities, central libraries became part of or even leaders in local renaissance stories. Let me give you some US central library highlights:

1. 1.

   In San Antonio, TX, the new bright-orange central library and garage was used to reclaim and encourage redevelopment in a beat-up tenement and warehouse district.

2. 2.

   In Chicago, IL, after more than 25 years of debate, the city built a $200,000,000 central library on the site of the old vice district. The facility's job was clear: it anchored the south end of State Street and the Loop and reclaimed what for a hundred years had been the city's largest red-light district.

3. 3.

   In Columbus, OH, the city quadrupled the size of the old Carnegie Central Library, with an underground parking lot. It reopened almost simultaneously with a new downtown shopping mall only a few blocks away. At the same time, the library board bought a block of three-story apartments adjacent to the new library, anticipating both future expansion and possible multiple-use and private-public development.

4. 4.

   Denver, CO, quadrupled the size of that city's central library and made it into a new civic and architectural complex more than tripling visitation and outdrawing every other government building or museum in the complex.

5. 5.

   San Francisco, CA, which I mentioned earlier, developed a completely new high-technology library-as-information center institution that became both public service point and tourist destination.

6. 6.

   Kansas City, MO, library leaders have reclaimed a donated bank building turnings its faded imagery into a library palace that has kicked off a neighborhood building boom in the neighborhood immediately around it.

7. 7.

   Seattle, WA, is taking a different tack. They have initiated construction on a striking architectural icon that will become one of the region's and the nation's most intriguing new buildings.

8. 8.

   The central library boom extended beyond big cities. In Fayetteville (Columbia County), NC, the remodeled library, according to its director: "became the chief traffic generator in the downtown area - due to our collections, electronic resources, adult, teen and children's programming, exhibits, conference rooms, meeting room, along with ample public seating and parking. Oh, yes and a coffee bar!"

9. 9.

   In Toledo (Lucas County), OH, the director writes that his central library and others like them have three functions:

   • •

     Best connection to the world. "Tangibly, a central/main public library is probably the greatest collection of local and worldwide (via the Internet) information in any urban community to which all citizens have equitable, direct and free access".

   • •

     Symbol of the city's place in the future. "Symbolically, central library represents a community's commitment to preparing future generations, enriching the lives of present residents and supporting life-long learners of all ages".

   • •

     On the downtown cityscape, "a central library can be a destination attraction, having more visitors than many commercial sites and serving more citizens more personally than any other government office".

The USA offers a landscape of examples: Los Angeles, Nashville, Memphis, Dallas or Atlanta (where civic leaders under built and now seek to expand both space and parking again), but the point would be the same. In places large and small, civic leaders for nearly two decades have been using central libraries as community assets to develop as part of central city redevelopment. Each of these institutions have three general purposes:

1. 1.

   As anchors for retail, educational, civic and residential development, like the central libraries in Nashville or Rochester, NY.

2. 2.

   As "hubs", or destinations for families throughout the region, which is the way that both Toledo and Denver think about their Central.

3. 3.

   As symbols or "signature buildings", to attract out-of-town visitors, like the new central libraries in San Francisco,Los Angeles or Seattle.

Rick Ashton, the CEO at Denver Public, recently summed up the downtown central-library situation when he wrote that they can serve as "7-day-per-week, daytime-and-evening, magnetic anchors. Ah, the tangible downtown. On weekends, they can be a family destination, an inexpensive outing with very positive content, and a 'safe' way for hesitant suburbanites to experience getting to and managing in a downtown setting. As we continue to move from a service economy to an experience economy, the experience of going to and using the services of the Central Library will become even more important. It is a place for learning, growing, and experiencing in a concrete way the abstract notion of information". And, in thinking anew about central libraries, civic officials have reclaimed these edifices as important statements in not only the cultural but economic landscape. In the process, each have restated in modern form the old idea that building elegant, attractive, customer-attracting central libraries is again "the progressive thing to do".

Glen HoltExecutive Director of the St Louis Public Library St Louis, MO, USA