Central Library doors will close this week

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When Seattle last decided to redo its downtown library, Eisenhower was president, Americans preferred practicality to tradition, and the elaborate, stately Carnegie library at Fourth and Spring was torn down.

In its place rose a $4.5 million building that at first was called the most beautiful library in the world. Whether that assessment was sincere, hyped or part of an emperor's-new-clothes peer pressure, who can say?

Heads up The Seattle Central Library will close at 6 p.m. Friday. There will be a special children's program at 10 a.m. that day and a slide show at 11:30 in the auditorium depicting the history of library buildings at 1000 Fourth Ave. - the Carnegie library (1906-1957), the current building (1960-2001) and the new library, planned for 2003. A 130,000-square-foot temporary library will open at 11 a.m. July 7 in the new part of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, 800 Pike St. Hours will remain the same. Starting at 6 p.m. Friday, a 24-hour book drop will open at the temporary library; books can also be returned at any branch.

But when the library opened on March 26, 1960, with an army of librarians in straight skirts and pumps, reading areas of curvy, plastic furniture, a drive-through window for picking up books and the first escalator to be installed in any public library, Seattle cheered.

"I thought it was beautiful," said Kim Turner, who has worked at the downtown library since 1961 and served as a volunteer guide on opening day. "It was airy and spacious. ... It was a bright, bold step for the city."

But 41 years of familiarity and increasingly crowded conditions nearly bred contempt. On Friday, the Seattle Central Library will close and, starting in August, the building will be demolished. A new library, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metropolitan Architecture, will open in 2003.

With 355,000 square feet, a unique four-story spiral of nonfiction books, 500 computers and a main floor "living room" that is envisioned as much as a gathering spot as a place for study, the new Central Library is a long-planned answer to the shortcomings of the current building.

This time around, the upgrade will cost taxpayers $159 million.

While library users wait for the bold aluminum, steel and glass creation, they won't have to go without. A temporary library will open July 7 in the expanded Washington State Convention and Trade Center at Eighth Avenue and Pike Street. The branch libraries are expected to bridge the gap until the temporary library opens.

About 550,000 printed materials plus compact discs, videos, sheet music and more - nearly two-thirds of the collection - will be available. For anything not on the shelves, patrons can make a request. The item desired may be stored somewhere in the building or in a warehouse. If the material is in a warehouse, it is to be delivered to the temporary library the next day.

"We actually think more people might use temporary central than use this library," said Andra Addison, library spokeswoman. "We get 5,000 people a day here, and the new place is a little closer to the main part of downtown."

The library is spending $10 million (of the $159 million set aside for the library project) on the temporary site for the lease, moving and construction.

The goal for the temporary library is comfort and service at the lowest cost possible. Shelves, furniture and other equipment are being moved from the current library. The look is industrial: polished concrete floors and no ceiling overhead to cover wires, pipes and ventilation systems.

"The more we spend here the less we can spend on the new library," said Sue Partridge, an architect and project manager for the temporary facility. "That guides every decision."

It's not all that hard for many at the Central Library to say goodbye to a building that served the community for 41 years but was meant to last only 20.

Architects Leonard William Bindon and John LeBaron Wright said expansion of their five-story structure could be achieved by eventually building higher. The elevator panels, still in use, optimistically show eight floors. But no expansion was approved, because it couldn't meet seismic standards.

Open areas have been overtaken by bookshelves and computers. Windows that once let in an abundance of sunlight have long ago been blocked by shelves.

The struggle to squeeze 900,000 volumes and 70 computers into a building never designed to handle such a load has led librarians to move books to places patrons never expected. Also, the air conditioning isn't what it should be. And the elevators? Well, one plunged to the ground during the Feb. 28 earthquake and hasn't been used since.

Jill Jean, director of the Central Library, laughs at the mere suggestion she might miss the place.

"Oh no," she said, "It's gotten so crowded in here, we just can't serve people as well as we could with more space, more equipment, more books."

But there must be some sentimentalists out there. The library staff is asking people this week to jot down their memories of the building in scrapbooks at the information desk, in e-mails to infospl@spl.org or in faxes to 206-386-4685.