When Gertrude Darlow joined the Los Angeles Public Library in October 1893, there were less than twenty employees. During her thirty-plus years with the library, she worked under seven City Librarians, including legends such as Tessa Kelso, Mary L. Jones, Charles Fletcher Lummis, and Everett Robbins Perry. She worked in all the Los Angeles Public Library (main) locations except the first one in the Downey Block. This means that she worked at City Hall, the Hamburger Building, the Homer Laughlin Building, the Metropolitan Building, and the current Central Library through the years. She was a poet, a stellar book reviewer, a master at matching readers to books, and likely the most traveled library worker across Southern California in the early twentieth century. Let me introduce you to the charming Gertrude E. Darlow.
