Review: The Los Angeles Central Library: Building an Architectural Icon, 1872–1933, by Kenneth A. Breisch and Los Angeles Central Library: A History of Its Art and Architecture, by Arnold Schwartzman and Stephen Gee

Abstract

Kenneth A. Breisch The Los Angeles Central Library: Building an Architectural Icon, 1872–1933 Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2016, 220 pp., 2 maps, 36 color and 125 b/w illus. $45 (cloth), ISBN 9781606064900 Arnold Schwartzman and Stephen Gee Los Angeles Central Library: A History of Its Art and Architecture Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 2016, 240 pp., 150+ illus. $45 (cloth), ISBN 9781626400368; $30 (paper), ISBN 9781626400375 The Los Angeles Central Library opened to the public on 6 July 1926. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue's acclaimed design features echoes of ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mayan, and Mediterranean revival architecture, yet, more than a mere expression of eclecticism, it represents a masterful amalgamation of historical sources. Once the object of neglect and threatened with demolition, its architect disregarded, the Central Library is now renowned for its rich decorative programs of sculpture, painting, and mosaic inside and out, and deserves to be considered one of the most significant American buildings of the twentieth century. Two new books mark its ninetieth anniversary. Although they necessarily overlap in their discussion, their subtitles are telling: one, featuring photos by Arnold Schwartzman and text by Stephen Gee, provides a thorough documentary history of the building, including its preservation and restoration, while the other, authored by Kenneth A. Breisch, emphasizes the library's genesis and early development and also provides a penetrating analysis of its sophisticated design. As suggested here, the two books offer effectively complementary considerations that reevaluate a sometimes overlooked architect and his endeavor. To follow the history of Los Angeles's library is to come to grips with the contentious development of the city itself. Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a loose coalition of social reformers and business leaders known as Progressives sought to rationalize government's management of society and the economy. In Southern California, Progressives campaigned to end the machine politics they had left “back east” and instead put decision making into the hands of nonpartisan experts, a strategy that resulted in the cumbersome and contentious process marking the Central Library's formation and development. The library building project originated and grew amid competing ambitions and interests among the city's leaders, contests of will and conflicting motivations that played out in a distinctively …