The Library Book

Bertram Goodhue’s associate, Carlton Winslow, agreed to finish the project on schedule, despite the team’s difficulty of coping with Goodhue’s death. On May 3, 1925, a construction crew laid the library’s cornerstone. It took them 21 hours to pour the concrete for the building’s enormous rotunda—“the largest concrete pour in the city’s history” (189). In the end, the building had 15 reading rooms and “miles of open shelving, but the majority of books were stored in four concrete silos, seen stories high” inside of the building (189). The stacks were constructed from steel grating and were supposedly earthquake- and fire-resistant (189). The crew completed the building in June 1926 and the library opened on July 15, 1926. The only people who objected to the building were those who believed that “the triangles and torch imagery in the library’s design denoted something sinister” (191). They suspected that Goodhue was “a devil worshipper or a Freemason” (189). A website called Vigilant Citizen still asserts this claim.

Shortly after the library opened, the institution began coping with the problem of crime taking place within the space. There were reports of small incidents, such as people defacing books, and more serious ones, such as people using the library to discuss criminal plans or to sell morphine. The new building was still getting its finishing touches. It took six years to paint the murals on the rotunda. Perry, meanwhile, was instituting newer and gentler library practices—those that took more consideration of good customer service. Three years after the library’s opening, the stock market crashed. The libraries offered communities solace. The number of patrons increased.

Perry’s deputy director was a woman named Althea Warren who already worked as the head of the San Diego library system. Warren hailed from a wealthy and distinguished Chicago family. She started her career in her hometown, working at a library branch in the poorest part of Chicago. Warren took leave from her job in San Diego to look after her mother, who struggled with mental illness. She moved near Pasadena with her mother. Her reputation, however, was well-known. When Perry heard that she moved to the Los Angeles area, he worked to convince her to assist him in his duties. Soon after she took her job at the Los Angeles Public Library, she met and fell in love with Gladys English who directed the Children’s Department. They moved in together in 1931 and remained together until English’s death in 1956.

After 1905, largely due to Andrew Carnegie’s efforts to increase the number of libraries, more women became librarians. In fact, only 20% of librarians were men. Los Angeles, though, was still not a place that one associated with scholasticism or reading. It was still a pioneer town. It was also difficult for Everett Perry to manage a library during the Great Depression. Perry was not particularly friendly and only concerned himself with business at work. In August 1933, he had a heart attack. Three months later, he passed away, leaving Althea Warren to succeed him.

Warren was a voracious reader and believed that it was a librarian’s duty to be exceptionally well-read. Her challenge was to serve a public that demanded more library services but to do so on a meager budget. To survive, she cut back on library hours; she didn’t hire new staff members to replace those who left; and she limited the purchase of new books. She also closed the library school that Tessa Kelso opened. When she had money at her disposal, she created additional services, such as a telephonic reference service to assist those who had all kinds of questions. In April 1940, Warren typed a letter that she addressed to “The City Librarian of Los Angeles on December 7, 1972.” The message would be opened on what would be the library’s one-hundredth anniversary. She wrote about her feelings of insecurity and about the austerity measures she took to keep the library open. It was Jones who opened her message.

During World War II, Warren again adjusted the library to a new reality. She closed the library at sunset to comply with lights-out rules at night, created a defense information desk and distributed informational leaflets, and collected international science material that the military consulted regularly, particularly for its patent information from Axis enemies Germany and Italy. Warren also took a four-month leave of absence to direct the Victory Book Campaign, a national book-drive “for army reading rooms, military hospitals, and training camps” (202). By March 1942, the campaign had collected 6,000,000 books to distribute to soldiers at home and overseas. This occurred while the Nazis were burning Europe’s libraries. When the war ended, Los Angeles experienced rapid growth. Soldiers returned and started families, which they moved to suburbs near “aircraft factories and electronic plants and oil drills” (202). Around this time, Harry Peak’s family migrated west from Missouri. New communities asked for their own library branches where there was only farmland before. However, there was no money to start construction.

In 1947, Althea Warren decided to retire. She was so popular with her patrons that she received hundreds of letters thanking her for her services, including one from author Aldous Huxley. Harold Hamill succeeded her. He previously headed the library system in Kansas City. Hamill believed in bringing modern conveniences to libraries, including a photo-lending system “that used micro-cameras to snap a picture of the book being borrowed” (203). He also established the city’s first Audio-Visual Department.

Post-war library patrons were increasingly diverse and particularly interested in the sciences. Many visitors were displaced people from Germany, Russia, and Eastern Europe. Many people came searching for books on atomic power. Yet, the library still lacked a department for teenagers. In 1968, Hamill developed a Teen Department that included events, such as rock concerts, and special activities, such as judo classes. The library took on more of the feel of a community center, especially when it ran additional programs on suicide prevention, drug abuse, gangs, and sexuality.

Librarians in the Teen Department serve multiple roles in addition to providing books—homework coach, dispenser of advice, and occasional disciplinarian. One of the librarians overseeing this department, Mary McCoy, finds herself warning kids not to use profanity or scolds them for sitting too close together on the beanbags. Seeing too much of the latter convinced McCoy that it would be a good idea to offer a workshop on healthy relationships and consent. After observing the workshop that McCoy hosted, Orlean visited the library’s Children’s Department. Story time was in progress. A group of small children and adults were singing the “Alphabet Song.” She then saw a little girl, around four, walk to the information desk to give a drawing to an absent librarian whom she called Miss Linda. She then proceeded to ask the librarian on duty a series of questions about dinosaurs, the alphabet, and scary library stories. 

In 1966, the authorities at Central Library banned coffeemakers. The appliance could have caused a fire hazard due to the library’s poor wiring. Librarians took other measures, too, such as lower-wattage bulbs. Central Library was only around 40 years old by the mid-1960s, “but it had the aches and pains of an elderly building” (211). Worse, no one seemed to be in charge of its maintenance: The murals on the rotunda were filthy and most of the entrances did not function. Rainwater entered the building, too, causing the books to become water-damaged. There was also no air-conditioning. The library’s dilapidated state reflected the decline of downtown Los Angeles, which was seedy and depopulated. Whites fled to the suburbs, while black residents remained in neighborhoods with poor tax bases and crumbling infrastructure. Black people who tried to move couldn’t due to housing discrimination.

In 1966, the study commissioned a study called the Green Report called for the Goodhue Building to be demolished and replaced with a larger structure. The new idea for the library was more akin to a warehouse. Trends at the time did not favor old buildings and saw little value in their restoration. Then, a group of architects organized to save the structure. They took their case to the Cultural Heritage Board which agreed to designate Central Library Cultural Monument No. 46. Despite its dilapidated state, patrons still used the library. It had a quality reference desk and added a new service—the Hoot Owl Telephonic Reference, which was available from nine o’clock in the evening to one o’clock in the morning. Callers were connected to a librarian who was prepared to answer just about any question. The call service operated “every weeknight until the end of 1976” (219).