The Central Library issue (and my impressions of the "recent past" preservation movement)

Roxanna Deane, who built the D.C. Public Library's Washingtoniana collection during her 36-year career, also created the D.C. Community Archives and started an oral history project. She retires this week. (Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post) From "Assembling the Stuff of History For the Real City of Washington," August 22, 2004.

I have been getting "hassled" by some people who work in the library system about sending the e-notice (and putting in the blog notice) about a teach-in about the suitability of the MLK Library in DC, because as is, the library doesn't work (I've written before about that, and also what I call blaming the building.)

Yesterday, because of the nonworking air conditioning, the temperature hit 87 degrees in the Washingtoniana Room--and someone let me know about it! And someone pointed out that I personally don't use the Martin Luther King Library very much. While I used to do so quite a bit, it's true that I use the Library of Congress and certain college and special libraries much much more than the Central or branch libraries.

So, I expanded the comments at the end of the blog entry to this:

Note that I go back and forth about the MLK Library. I don't know if it can really be a good library, because it's a modernist building, an office building more or less, and a place that as designed doesn't appear to be too concerned with being a functional place for people to do things.

The original communication describes the MLK Library at present as a "soulless, unwelcoming place." Frankly, the same description of "soulless, unwelcoming place" can be made of many many fully maintained, built-as-designed modernist buildings, especially those designed by "starchitects" such as Mies van der Rohe, although these days we think of this in terms of starchitects such as Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenmann, Rem Koolhaas, and Frank Gehry.

I think of libraries, especially central libraries (and college libraries) as grand, living places, that connect us to knowledge and to the community of learning and betterment. I also think of libraries as a refuge, a safe place people can go when for whatever reason their private places may be out of control.

Soul would be the first word that comes to mind when thinking about such places. And soul/soulful is the last word I would ever use to describe a modernist building--except maybe for the facade of the Gehry designed "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague, although I have no idea how the building functions inside.

This is the Nationale-Nederlanden building - popularly known as the Fred & Ginger building - in Prague. It was designed by Frank Gehry and is situated in New Town, next to the Vltava River. Here's some more information. Flickr photo by Von_'s.

Words like cold, unforgiving, antiseptic, and harsh define modern buildings for me.

It's why I am disconnected for the most part from the "recent past" preservation movement. I hadn't thought of it before, but this thread makes me understand why. To me, a key part of the value of historic preservation concerns sense of place. Most modern buildings are designed deliberately to be anti-place and all about the building (design as a personal _expression of the architect, little concerned with context or connection to the world beyond the site). (The line I use to describe historic preservation is that it is concerned with the nexus of architecture, place, and [social, cultural and economic] history.)

I do want a great central library in the city, and it will be interesting to see if the American Institute of Architects can convince us that this can be done with the MLK Library.

I won't be able to attend the session, as I will be away. But I hope someone will attend and send a synopsis, to this list or others.

In the meantime, I rue the conditions at MLK suffered by the staff, patrons, and the collection.
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Anyway, I signed up to testify on the pending MLK Library facility bill. The hearing is June 15th.

Click here for the perspective of the Recent Past Preservation Network on the MLK Library.

Index Keywords: libraries