Some public buildings are more public than others.

While museums, schools, city halls, and other buildings associated with civic life represent critical aspects of culture, government, and education, none accommodate public needs and public good as democratically as libraries.

Contemporary libraries often provide computer stations and internet access, information for job seekers, voter registration information, periodicals, newspapers, and books, almost always for free. In many cases, users don't even need a library card, which is often also free.

Libraries are multigenerational, multiuse spaces. They are the only places where those not enrolled in a school or university, or affiliated with a club can check out books. Library visitors reflect a wide variety of local socioeconomic realities, especially in urban areas. At any given moment at Seattle's temporary central library space, an architectural historian researching a historic building might be working next to someone recently unemployed, someone with a reasonably harmless mental disorder, a retiree researching her family's history, a highschool student researching a term paper, and a community activist seeking evidence for a public hearing.

What other public building allows for quiet connections between so many disparate groups?

Philanthropy directed toward public libraries since their development over a century ago has well understood the value of free access to information. Even before the so-called information age, the transformative power of books and independent learning has attracted the attention of those well able to provide capital for library construction. Andrew Carnegie is perhaps the most well known library benefactor, due to the scope of his beneficence, and the impact of the Carnegie libraries on civic life and city character throughout the United States.

Seattle was fortunate enough to receive funding for several Carnegie libraries nearly a century ago. This legacy continues today thanks to the ongoing tradition of philanthropy witnessed by the Gates Foundation's history-making gifts to the Seattle Public Library system. The Gates Foundation, and a 1998 library levy, have enabled the Seattle Public Library to improve and expand the many facilities within the system, and build new ones in Seattle's neighborhoods.

As a part of this initiative, Seattle will soon be seeing its new downtown library completed. The third central library on its site, this newest addition to the city's civic landscape reflects a new vision for independent learning and enrichment, and a new standard for institutional architecture in this city.

Building on Carnegie's Legacy

Andrew Carnegie provided Seattle with funding for several libraries, including the city's central library located on the site where the newest iteration is now being built. Prior to Carnegie's gift of $200,000, Seattle's library was housed in a number of locations, none of which were designed as libraries. Paul Dorpat describes and illustrates the library's peripatetic beginnings on HistoryLink, an online encyclopedia of Seattle and King County history. A number of Carnegie libraries have received landmark status, some due to planning around the Libraries for All initiative.

Landmark Carnegie branch libraries include Douglass-Truth, originally called the Yesler Branch, the Fremont Library, the Green Lake Library, the Queen Anne Library, the University Library, the West Seattle Library and the Columbia City Library, which is part of the Columbia City Landmark District.

Plans for each library are included on the Seattle Public Library's website.

Carnegie libraries are generally signature buildings that command attention. They are, more often than not, architectural "jewels," sited and designed to be viewed on more than one side. Columbia City's library is the centerpiece of the neighborhood's primary open space, or "village green." Adding onto these buildings is more challenging than additions to typical commercial buildings, especially those in urban areas that have one principle entrance fronting the street.

Mediating between the distinctive character of these buildings, and the libraries expansion plans, the Seattle Landmarks Board is faced with finding reasonable compromises that will preserve as much of the designated fabric as possible while allowing change and upgrades. While this is the case with all Certificate of Approval decisions, the stakes and controversy tend to be higher with public buildings. Libraries being one of the most public of public buildings, proposed alterations tend to solicit more community feedback than private development plans.

The Seattle Landmarks Board is now in the process of approving plans for alterations to Douglass Truth library, and will be considering the newest iteration of the designs at an August 20th (2003) hearing. Plan for the branch's addition were highlighted within the Seattle AIA exhibit Both/And: Building Modern in the Context of Historic Architecture earlier this year.

Community response to initial ideas, and feedback from the Landmarks Board, have led to the current design which partially submerges the addition below the existing building, and reduces visual impact of new construction on the east side of the building.

Plans for additions to the Columbia City branch library have had to accommodate the village green. The most recent plans demonstrate how the additions defer to the historic structure in scale, form, materials, and orientation. This particular Carnegie Library is exceptionally small, and is being expanded by nearly 100% of its original square footage. Given the site and programmatic requirements, the review process has been exceedingly important. Early schematic ideas tended to overwhelm the site to accommodate the library's expanded program.

Adding to the Recent Past

After the success of the 1998 levy, the library system commissioned a historic resource review and landmark nominations for buildings within the system potentially eligible for the local landmarks register. This study yielded three new modern landmarks, the Lake City Branch Library, the Magnolia Library, and the North East Library.

The Seattle Landmarks Board's recognition of these resources bodes well for other exceptional examples of "modern" design. The designation and protection of significant features presents new challenges, however. These buildings aren't jewel boxes with historicist details and traditional building materials like the Carnegies, nor do they assume object-like prominence on their sites

Making the case for significance is one thing. Comprehending the architectural expression of modernism within plans for additions and alterations requires understanding of principles that are somewhat abstract. The general public understands why Carnegie libraries are architecturally significant - their presence and ornamentation are easy on the eyes, and their designs are relatively conventional. Designs without ornamentation, those that focus on volume, line, form, siting, the relationship between inside and outside, "honest" use of materials, and those that celebrate rather than clad structural systems, are often harder for traditional preservationists.

Additions to the Lake City Library are challenging because the materials are relatively traditional (by twentieth century standards) while its expression is relatively abstract.

The Lake City Branch Library, built in 1965, is clad in multicolored brick ranging from vibrant oranges to deep browns. Corbelled arched window openings seem to rise out of the ground just enough to provide a little natural light to the primary interior space. The design, and the library's distinctive gates won a local AIA Merit Award.

The design isn't precious, in the manner of Columbia City's, but rather, muscular, receding, and expressive. The siting along a car-friendly suburban-scale street is underwhelming. The significance of the building lies in its unique architectural character, but how that character is respected by the new additions is exceptionally challenging. What is the appropriate complement to a building like Lake City's.

Coming to a reasonable answer has taken time. The library will be a part of a new community civic center that incorporates a number of local public services. The new addition helps tie the extant library together with the rest of the master plan for the larger site area. ARC Architects was selected in May of 2000 through a community process. Stan Lokting, ARC Architect's principal on the project noted that the process, though long, was valuable, and ultimately produced a better addition design.

The Landmarks Board stressed making a visual distinction between the historic building and new construction. Lokting noted that the colors of the new design are dark relative to the vibrant warm tones of the library's brickwork. The most recent designs demonstrate, to some degree how color and form of old and new construction work together. The new design tries not to mimic the old - no round arch windows. Lokting noted that Lake City's version of modernism was relatively difficult to add on to respectfully. A more modular building, like the Magnolia Branch Library would have been easier to expand - the Northwest International style building, with its "honest" use of materials and structure is more akin to present day design predilections than the low, solid, strongly horizontal Lake City building.

For more on the Lake City Branch addition, see this month's Technology feature. For more on modern additions to historic buildings, see our May 2003 policy feature.

The Libraries for All initiative, like the Carnegie library effort, is an historic opportunity. Ideally, funding for institutions as significant as public libraries would be ongoing, but this is never the case. New buildings, and additions to our neighborhoods' character defining landmarks, are part of the larger legacy of institutional re-creation in this city, including our new City Hall, our new and expanding public schools, our new primary concert venues, and a few of our museums. Seattle's late 1990s boom will be felt for years to come as public institutions such as these become strongly associated with the city's civic identity.

View last month's Pending Landmarks article

Back to Top