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Episode 1 - Los Angeles, You Need a Library! Transcript

Speaker: Good morning and welcome to the Richard J. Riordan Central Library. The library is now open.

Patron: I wonder about the number of people that come in here on a given day.

Patron: It's incredible, the size and just the architecture and the artwork here. It's impressive.

Patron: You know, I'm amazed at how broadly based, how you can appeal to every need. You know, every niche need that's possible. Anything that somebody needs, they can find it out through the library.

Host: Hello and welcome to Past Due: One Hundred Years of Central Library, a podcast commemorating the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles turning one hundred years old. As part of our celebration, we're putting on a variety of events, a special reading challenge, and creating tons of original content for Angelenos to learn more about their beloved Central library. For more, visit lapl.org/100.

I'm Sheridan Cazares, a librarian in the Exploration and Creativity Department of the Los Angeles Public Library and your official Past Due podcast host. In our first episode, I'm happy to introduce esteemed experts who will help us illuminate the early days of the Central Library from its conception to its construction.

Today, we're interviewing professor, historian, and author Kenneth A Breisch. We'll learn about one of the oldest books in Los Angeles Public Library's collection from librarian Julie Huffman, and talk to docent Tom McQuaid about the mystery of the Hope Street Tunnel.

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Sheridan: We are excited to welcome Kenneth A. Breisch to our podcast today to talk about Central Library's early history. Ken is an architectural historian and associate professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Southern California, as well as the founder and past Director of USC's Graduate Program in Heritage Conservation. He is also a past President of the Society of Architectural Historians, a board member emeritus of the Santa Monica Conservancy, and he served as a member of the Board of the Santa Monica Public Library from 2001 - 2014. Ken is also the author of several books, including Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America: A Study in Typology, American Libraries: 1730-1950, and The Los Angeles Central Library: Building an Architectural Icon, 1872-1933, which focuses on the early history of the Los Angeles library system and everything that led to the building of our iconic Central Library in 1926. Welcome, Ken! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Ken: I'm very happy to be here.

Sheridan: So your book about the Central Library is about the building itself, but it's also about the civic history involved in the creation of a library system and then a central library. How did LA come to have a public library system?

Ken: Well, you know, the first library was a subscription library founded in 1872 by the Anglo population, I guess. And they felt that established Los Angeles as an Anglo-American city, I think, because public libraries were a kind of central cultural institution at that particular time. In 1899, it moved to the new City Hall under Tessa Kelso, and that's when it really began to establish itself, thanks to great librarian Tessa Kelso. She was very progressive in many ways and really established the institution as a modern - a modern public library right from the beginning. She wanted to expand its influence, and she opened a lending library in Boyle Heights very soon after the library opened. But for a long time, the development of branches was kind of slow.

Beginning in the late 1890s, the city began to look to Andrew Carnegie for money, but basically they wanted money to build a central library, and Carnegie was doing that between the late 1890s and around 1903 or 1904, and then he really announced that he was no longer donating money for the construction of big central libraries, only branch libraries and libraries in small American towns. And so that sort of put an end to—well, it didn't put an end—we still were asking Carnegie for money all through the teens.. And finally, in 1911, he offered money to build six branch libraries, but not a central library. In the interim, the library had moved to a number of temporary locations from City Hall, including, you know, several office buildings and department stores. And then, finally, after World War I, which put everything on hold, in 1921, the voters in Los Angeles voted money to build a new central library. And that was, that was motivated in part because just about the same time, San Francisco was building a central library, and that was actually part of the campaign here: “If San Francisco has a library, we better have one.” And San Diego had a Carnegie library, and Cleveland was building a big central library. And so there was a bit of competition there, I guess. But in 1921, the money was set aside. And then the debate began about what exactly the library would become.

Sheridan: Why do you think that LA’s civic leaders decided to hire Bertram Goodhue over, um, LA based architects for the Central Library?

Ken: Well, it's a good question, I think. Uh, it's not entirely clear, but I think the obvious reason is that he had been the chief designer for the Panama-California Exposition, which opened in San Diego in 1915. Probably most everybody is familiar with what remains of that in Balboa Park in San Diego, and it was all Spanish Colonial Revival, very elaborate Spanish Colonial Revival or Baroque, or what's sometimes referred to as Churrigueresque style of architecture. And it was wildly popular. And I know that a lot of the commissioners went down to visit, and they decided that Goodhue would probably be, you know, their man to design the library.

That's what they wanted, was something that would reflect the popularity of the exposition in San Diego. Also, he was a prominent New York architect, and they may have been swayed by that a little bit because, you know, at that point LA was still, I don’t want to say a backwater, but it wasn't a major American city. And so hiring a, now would be called a “Starchitect,” probably swayed them to some, you know, to some effect as well.

Sheridan: How did Bertram Goodhue approach the library's design and then did that change over time?

Ken: Well, you know, it's a really good question. Clearly, what the commission wanted was the Spanish Colonial Revival style. In LA's imagery, self-image at the time was really tied to its Spanish past. All mythic, I might add. This “heroic” part of the history of Spain and Southern California, which was anything but heroic, as we know. And they really had very, very little interest in, you know, people of Spanish heritage or Hispanic heritage. But it was this myth that was promoting tourism and promoting Los Angeles. And so this would be, I think, intended as a centerpiece of this. And so Goodhue presented a whole series of very beautiful drawings, very elaborate Spanish Colonial Revival designs, and a number of them were rejected by the Arts Commission.

In 1925, he presented the design that would become the library as it is now, which some people still call sort of Moresque, Moorish or Spanish. But it really was, it took a dramatic turn away from the elaborate kind of Spanish colonial ornaments that he had been presenting before. And there was some hesitation, I'll say, on the part of the commission and other people. At the last minute he commissioned an oil painting of what the library would look like, which you still have. It was what Goodhue presented and won the day. Definitely.

Unfortunately, he died just shortly after. They accepted that and accepted his new drawings for the library, which is sort of similar between, you know, historicizing and modern and, uh, pretty radical in terms of the pyramidal roof and the way the sculptor Lee Lawrie integrated the sculpture into the architecture itself. Fortunately, he had been working with Carleton Winslow as the associate architect who worked with him in San Diego, and so he was able to carry on supervision of the, of the architecture.

Sheridan: How did LA residents react to the new building in the 1920s, early 1930s? And then is there any word on how library staff reacted? How did they feel about it?

Ken: It got good reviews in the LA Times and other papers, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of documentation of how, what people thought of it. I think they probably scratched their heads and was trying to figure out what was going on there. In terms of—ironically, the architectural community who had opposed Goodhue, had really swayed them in a major way. The idea of integrating sculpture, which was just beginning to develop at this time as sort of Art Deco architecture, really took hold in LA as well.

Sheridan: Was there anything surprising that you learned as you conducted research for the book, something that you didn't know about or maybe hadn't heard about before?

Ken: What I think surprised me more than anything else...what developed slowly over time, was thinking about Goodhue, who decided he loved California. He didn't like Los Angelenos because they were from the Midwest, and he had trouble in Nebraska with Midwesterners. He had nothing good to say about the residents of Los Angeles, believe it or not. But he had to travel across the country, and the program for this library really revolves around the idea of the transmission of knowledge, which is an idea that Hartley Burr Alexander came up with. If you look at the front, you have Phosphor and Hesper, Dawn and dusk, and then inscriptions with the names of great authors, which range from the beginning of what he thought of as human knowledge or literature in Asia to the Western tradition.

And so his idea was that all of universal tradition had traveled from Asia, where it had its birth to the West. And I really have a strong feeling that Goodhue, traveling across the country, felt coming to the Pacific Coast, that Alexander's idea had come full circle. And the library, I think, was intended to represent that; to reflect the accumulation of human knowledge.

The other thing, I think, was how perceptive Goodhue was about Los Angeles. You know, his designs began, were embedded in this mythology of this being this Spanish city, which by the 1920s, of course, was being dramatically transformed into what people were just beginning to acknowledge, as, you know, not just a modern American city, but the city of the future. And I think this library, in Goodhue's mind, sort of bridged that. That it still looked to the past, but he rejected that Spanish mythology for the idea that this was the city of the future. And it came just at the moment when I think Angelenos were starting to think of it that way themselves.

You know, it was the center of automobile culture by 1926, and it was growing more rapidly than any other American city. I may be projecting a little bit much into it, but I think between Lowry and Alexander and Goodhue and the conversations they had, they were really trying to invent something new.

Sheridan:What do you think that the that the history of libraries can tell us about, about broader civic history?

Ken: Libraries in my mind, are central to civic culture. If you're going to have an informed electorate, if you're going to have informed representatives at City Council or Congress or wherever, they need to, they need education. And, you know, for most people, education at the time this was being built, it ended in high school. Not everyone. But so, you know, it continues to inform that kind of idea. But there also— the Central Library and the branches in particular are kind of the cultural glue that holds the city together in LA.

That was particularly important because it was expanding exponentially in the decade before into the valley; over 400 square miles. And so to establish extensions, really, of the central library across the city was an important cultural phenomena in a way I like to think of, you know, the torch at the top as sort of representing the focus of all of these branch libraries, which are expanding from this central pyramid.

And so in that sense, you know, libraries are dramatically important. And, you know, I have to give, from my experience, credit to librarians who tenaciously hold to the idea that these are not just democratic institutions. But to my mind, public libraries are the most democratic invention in the history of America. Everybody is welcome.

Sheridan: Mhm. Okay. Switching gears just a tiny little bit. What are your favorite aspects of the Central Library. What's your favorite thing?

Ken: You know, I love the architecture. And there still is a real sense of, sort of mystery about the whole sculptural program and the beauty of Lee Lawrie's sculpture and the way it's integrated or just develops organically out of the architecture. It's really a rare aspect of this building in particular. But in general, you know, I just like the library. I love the interior spaces as well, the rotunda, which a lot of people don't know. And they should come on down.

Sheridan: Come on telling me,

Ken: You know, uh, it's one of the great architectural spaces in the city of Los Angeles.

Sheridan: Thank you so much for joining us, Ken. It's been a pleasure. We encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of Ken's beautiful book, the Los Angeles Central Library: Building An Architectural Icon 1872-1933, available to check out with your LAPL card. And to learn more about the library's history in Los Angeles and how the Central Library came to be.

Ken: Thank you.

Sheridan: So now we're going to talk about a library mystery. One of the things library patrons often ask us about is the Hope Street Tunnel. An inviting, albeit spooky, area that's part of the original Goodhue building and is now off limits to the public. To learn more about the Hope Street Tunnel and other hidden places in Central Library, today we're talking to docent extraordinaire Tom McQuaid. Welcome, Tom.

Tom: Thank you Sheridan. Appreciate it.

Sheridan: So what is the history of the Hope Street Tunnel and why is it closed?

Tom: Well, the Hope Street tunnel, um, actually, the Hope Street facade was part of the original main entrance to the library itself. So when Bertram Goodhue was designing the building, he was told that that was going to be the main entrance to the building. Uh, one reason why is because on the west side, which is now the McGuire Gardens, was actually houses, and it was not owned by the city or by the library itself. While Goodhue was designing the library, the city had bought that land, condemned the buildings, uh, and said, “Make that the main entrance of it.” So instead of Goodhue going in and erasing the facade that he had done for the Hope Street side, he just moved over and did a new entrance to the side, on the west side. Now it’s considered the main entrance to the library.

Sheridan: Wow, I didn't know that. And I'm so glad that he didn't erase that facade, because it's gorgeous. When you're walking up from that Hope Street entrance. It looks so, uh, scholastic and just and just—it's a beautiful sight. I understand that there used to be murals. Uh, when you entered the library at Hope Street. Could you tell us more about those?

Tom: Sure. So that entrance there, you actually have two entrances on the Hope Street side. You have one at street level where the tunnel is. And then there was a second one on what, at the time, was considered the first floor. And so that was the one that we can use nowadays. But the tunnel, um, that was a way to go into the building itself, go down this very long tunnel. And then there was the lobby where there were stairways and elevators that would bring you up to the rotunda, where you were going to be doing all your work. So along this very long tunnel was a series of murals, and they were done by a local artist who was named Albert Herter, and he took scenes of the early days of California and put them along the, uh, the wall.The wall is actually going all the way the length of this tunnel.

Sheridan: Amazing. And where are those murals now?

Tom: So what had happened is very soon after they were installed, uh—this was in 1928, actually, the murals were installed—is that very soon they realized that they were deteriorating because the walls were seeping moisture. Also, it was very dark. And so it was building up mold and also degrading. So they decided they would have to move them to higher ground. So what they did is they moved them up to what at the time was the History Reading Room, which is also on the south side of the building.

The challenge was, is that the original murals were going down this very long tunnel. Also the tunnel was tapered. In other words, one side was larger than the other. They needed to make this very long mural or series of murals, um, and make them fit into this very rectangular space that the, uh, History Reading Room was at the time. So they needed to bring back Albert Herter—and this is in 1930—to have them fit. Um, so a lot of cutting and pasting was necessary to do that. He was actually, uh, I won't say pleased by it, but the fact that, uh, he was appreciating the fact that they were moved from this place where it was kind of dark, and they were deteriorating. And now it was in this very open space where people would be able to be doing their work, but at the same time admiring his, uh, murals.

Sheridan: Yeah. I'd imagine if I was an artist, I'd be happy that my murals got more attention.

Tom: Yeah. Even though they were chopped up.

Sheridan: Yeah. Okay, Tom. So even though the Hope Street side of Central Library was no longer the main entrance, it was still used as an entrance for a few years. What would you encounter if you entered through the Hope Street Tunnel in the 1920s and 30s?

Tom: Well, you'd continue down. The end of the tunnel would be a circulation desk with a staff person there. Um, there was a circulation desk and a staff person stationed at each of the six entrances to the library.

Sheridan: Wow. So when was the Hope Street Tunnel actually closed to the public then?

Tom: Well, um, it started, I guess, around when the Depression came. And then this would continue until World War II. There started to be cutbacks into, um, the staffing and to the services that were provided to the public from the library. And one of the things that was lost at that time is in 1943, in the summer, uh, the entrance was closed, at the tunnel level. And also that whole level, just the lower level one was also closed, uh, during that time.

Sheridan: So, um, the hallway at Hope Street, and I know this because I've walked through there several times just as a staff member, uh, features a lot of, like, really kind of ghostly glowing lights. Do you know anything? Do you know anything about those fixtures?

Tom: Sure, sure. So what they are, actually, the lights in the 1926 library were all designed by Lee Lawrie, who was the sculptor. So you think of the sculptor who did the statues that are on that Oak Street side going along the roofline, but also the Phosphor and Hesper statues that you see on the west side. And so he also did the light design for them, and he did fifteen different designs for the lamps, including the stanchion lamps that you do see now in the Children's Literature room.

Sheridan: Yeah. It's so amazing to me how every little bit of this building has been completely like this. They're all bespoke designs. I mean, you know, you had artisans and designers and painters and everybody working on all of these different little bits, and they're all so individual. Um, Tom, when you're giving tours of Central Library, are there any other hidden spaces that people are most interested in that you can let us know about?

Tom: Space as well, and I think there's a series of them. Um, usually when we bring them into the building, we take them up to the north stairways. Usually they’ll see the civilization statue. They'll see the sphinxes that are at the top of the steps. And we also point out the ceiling. We see the Julian Garnsey stenciling on the top. And also another series of lamps that are designed by Lee Lawrie. But then they notice those windows that are also along the wall. And they're strange windows in the sense that they're not looking outside, they're looking inside the building when they're already inside the building. In other words, they're looking at another section of the library. And so they always want to ask about that.

Also, too, when we go into the, um, Children's picture book room, which is on the far west side of the building, um, they look over top of the KLOS puppet theater that's there. They'll notice that there's a grating there, fairly large, um, but they notice there's lights on behind there. In other words, there's a room up there in some sense. And so they ask about that and they’ll want to know what the story is.

Sheridan: Hmm. Okay, Tom, how would you feel about having you back on the podcast to talk specifically about those windows? I think that'd be a really interesting Hidden Spaces and Forgotten Places; a future episode.

Tom: It'd be my pleasure.

Sheridan: Great. So now we know how the Hope Street Tunnel went from being the main entrance of the Central Library to now a liminal space, I guess you could say, that the public can only look at it from the outside. Uh, mystery solved, I guess.

Next up on this podcast, we're going to talk about a special book on Genealogy. Stay tuned.

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Sheridan: Today we have librarian Julie Huffman here to talk about a hidden gem in Los Angeles Public Library's Genealogy collection, a German book first published in 1550, titled Berichte und Anzeigen der Stadt Augsburg, forgive the pronunciation, which translates as The Records and Reports from the Honorable City of Augsburg. Julie Huffman has been a Genealogy librarian at LAPL Central Library for over ten years, and has worked for over twenty-four years at Los Angeles Public Library in many other roles, including as a Young Adult, Children's and Adult Reference librarian. The Genealogy and Local History collection at Central Library is one of the largest on the West Coast, numbering more than 52,000 volumes, including over 14,000 family histories. Julie, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Julie: Thanks, Sheridan. I'm thrilled that you asked me to be here.

Sheridan: So let's start with the basics. What is Berichte und Anzeigen der Stadt Augsburg? Why did you choose this particular book to talk about with us?

Julie: Well, when I first started working here, um, the previous Genealogy subject specialist told me that this book was the oldest one in our Genealogy collection, which of course piqued my interest. And it is so special that it's housed in our Special Collections department, and that department is open to the public, but by appointment only. But since I work here and I happen to know Rose [Knopka], she lets me in now and then so that I can take the opportunity to examine the book, which I like to do quite a bit, because it's just so unusual.

Sheridan: So tell us a little bit about the book.

Julie: Well, it's an illustrated account of the old noble families of Augsburg, Germany. And each page is an illustration of a man clad in field armor, sort of like what you might see depicted at a Renaissance Fair. And each knight is featured next to his coat of arms. And the illustrations in the book are kind of crazy. They're very fanciful, and the characters appear to be dancing with weapons amongst their shields. I'm not exactly an expert on how this book was exactly published in 1550, but it was probably made by using woodcuts for the illustrations and possibly movable type for the German text. The illustrator was Christoph Weiditz, who was known at the time for his vivid depictions of people in traditional costumes and the families that are featured in the book and their heraldry was compiled by Paulus Hector Meyer. And he was a fencing master who appears to have been obsessed with medieval martial arts. And I think because fencing is sort of a dancing art in a way that might have informed Christoph when he depicted the illustrations of the men.

Sheridan: Is there anything special about LAPL’s copy that you want to let us know about?

Julie: Well, our copy is one of six that's in the United States, according to WorldCat. But the copies that I've seen digitized online are solely black and white, like just the woodcut black and white publishing copy. But ours has been meticulously and beautifully hand-painted over the black and white. By whom and when? I do not know, but it's really gorgeous.

Sheridan: And what can a genealogy book tell us about Augsburg or that region in the 16th century?

Julie: Well, Augsburg had always been a locally well-known town. But between the years 1470 and 1550, when this book was published, it exploded economically due to trade and banking. One of the families depicted four different times in this book was the Fugger family, spelled F, U, G, G, E, R. The head of this family, Jakob Fugger, was an extremely rich merchant and banker of Augsburg. They were basically the equivalent of the Medicis in Italy; and one of the cool things I discovered while examining this family was that the coat of arms illustrated in the book is not exactly the pure original coat of arms for the Fugger family. The base coat of arms for Fugger, according to the armorial general, is two fleur de lis, one blue and one gold. And this book does show those flowers in the upper left and lower right quadrant of the shield, but it also has three silver hunting horns in the lower left quadrant and a woman holding a bishop's headdress in the upper right quadrant. So this would indicate an impalement or merging of arms that happens when one armiger marries another. So this book, this book's depiction of the Fugger coat of arms, is actually a coat of arms for the Fugger, Kirchberg and Weissenhorn family unit, even though the only surname Fugger is above the knight sporting the shield.

So this is sort of a good example of how heraldry can be used for genealogy. We see the men in this book who have the surname Fugger, and they are related to the Fugger line, who married Kirchberg and Weissenhorn somewhere along the way.

And another thing I thought about was the coloring that has been hand-painted on the shields in the book. That makes our book special. It matches the blazon, which is the verbal description of the Fugger coat of arms. So the fleur de lis have indeed been painted, one blue and one gold, which tells me whoever did paint this book knew their heraldry.

Sheridan: One last question for you, Julie. Do we know how LAPL came to acquire this rare book?

Julie: And that is a mystery, Sheridan. Special Collections doesn't have any record of the acquisition. And the Genealogy librarian before me, who started working here in 1970, said that it was here when he arrived. There is a catalog card I found in an old file that states that as of 1970, the book was worth $685 at an antiquarian book fair. Possibly that was when we bought it, but I'm not sure what the collection development policy was here back then, but I would be pretty surprised if we paid that amount for any book.

Sheridan: Julie, is there anything you want to tell Angelenos about Special Collections here at LAPL. Or any of the collections in the subject departments at Central?

Julie: Yeah. Um, I'm not sure if people realize, but every subject department here at Central Library has very special books, and the ones that are really rare are then removed from the subject department and put in our Special Collections department. And you can find information about that department on our website. And anybody can make an appointment. You just have to fill out a researcher's form and then contact Rare Books or Special collections to set up an appointment. But there's some really dynamite and unusual things there. A lot of the genealogy books that I've found up there are really one in a million. Some just are handwritten. But every subject department has stuff. So when you find a book in our catalog and it says the location is Special Collections, you know that you're going to have to do something special to see that. But I would encourage you to do it. The room is beautiful. It's going to be a memorable experience.

Sheridan: Well, thank you so much, Julie, for this fascinating look into the oldest book at Los Angeles Public Library's collection. And thanks for talking with us today about this title. And thank you so much for all the work that you do to help patrons research their family history.

Julie: Well, thanks a lot for inviting me. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

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Sheridan: Today's episode was made possible by Executive Producer Christina Hairston and Producers Alice Schock and Stella Mittelbach. It was recorded at the Central Library with help from the amazing staff in the Octavia Lab. To see photos, documents or more about the places and spaces we discussed in today's episode, check the Central 100 Podcast show notes at lapl.org./central100 I'm your host, Sheridan J. Casarez with the Los Angeles Public Library. Thanks for listening to the Past Due podcast. We'll see you at the library.

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