Watch Out!

I knew there was a watch list for endangered animals but I was shocked to find out that someone was looking out for endangered libraries as well.  The World Monuments Fund is a non-profit organization based in New York that advocates for the protection of all “significant” buildings, monuments and sites around the world (not just libraries).  Their goal is to save and preserve places that have cultural or historical importance in order to protect our society's heritage for future generations.  To raise awareness, the Fund announces a “Watch List of Endangered Sites” every two years.  The list sends a wake up call to the world that a place is in danger due to war, disaster, neglect or vandalism.  The sites can be nominated by any concerned group or individual and then 100 are selected by an international panel of smart people.   

While a site is on the watch list it is eligible for WMF grants and funding but, just as importantly, the site can use the list to highlight their plight and attract donors.  A frightening slide show on the WMF website offers beautiful photographs of places in peril and with a click you can read the whole story for each location - a great history and architectural lesson.  

There were nine places in the United States chosen for the current list, including the 30 year old Atlanta Fulton Central Library.  As you may recall from yesterday, the original Atlanta Central Library was an ornate classical building, funded by Andrew Carnegie, and built out of white marble in 1902.  The library that replaced it in 1980 was the exact architectural opposite.    After The Carnegie Library was renovated twice,  the citizens of Atlanta approved a bond to build a new library in the 1970s and the Carnegie. 

Isabelle Hyman, a professor at NYU, explains that Carlton Rochell, the Director of the Library at the time, convinced the library board that Atlanta should construct a  “world class building” and proceeded to interview world renowned architects for the job. At the time Marcel Breuer was famous for his design of ‘The Whitney Museum’ in NY and his contributions to modern architecture.  Although Breuer’s steel frame and concrete panel design,  massed in a heavy geometric form was acknowledged as masterpiece, its brutalist design (remember the Geisel Library) was and is not very popular in Atlanta.  Since it was opened in 1980, the building’s theater roof has collapsed, the restaurant has been closed and $5 million was spent to make the building more ‘cheerful’.  Now it risks being demolished for a more ‘contemporary space’.  In 2008 legislation was passed to use public funds for yet another Atlanta Public Library.  Flushing $25 million down the drain during a economic downturn is a crime that can be prevented.  The citizens of Atlanta should not turn their back on this architectural treasure - they should appreciate it, and Breuer, for the modern monument that it is.       

Certainly not every building is worth saving but there are some that represent a time in our history, an architect, or a belief system that is crucial to our understanding of our heritage as people on this planet...we need to be careful that we are balancing our desire to make progress with our respect and appreciation of our past.  If we don’t, the reminders of who we are and where we came from will be bulldozed away forever.    

Take That Tecumseh

The story of the Atlanta Public Library (now called the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library) uncovered a whole new chapter in America’s library history for me.  While other big cities were arguing over library architecture and turning private subscription libraries into public institutions,  Atlanta was struggling to recover from the devastation of  The Civil War.  Mayor James Calhoun was forced to surrender Atlanta to the Union Army on September 2, 1864.  General William Tecumseh Sherman then ordered civilians to evacuate and proceeded to torch the city (with the exception of hospitals and churches) burning most of it to the ground.  By November Sherman was ready to move on.  He left Atlanta to begin his infamous ‘March to the Sea’, destroying everything in his wake and arriving in Savannah just before Christmas.

The City of Atlanta literally rose from the ashes (its symbol is a phoenix) and became Georgia’s new capital.  In fact the entire Southeast region of the US was reeling from the effects of the civil war and struggling to rebuild it’s infrastructure and adapt to a new economic model that didn’t include slavery.  It’s not surprising that public libraries did not exist in the South before 1895, cities and towns were regaining their balance and starting anew.
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Along with a late start and reconstruction distractions, Atlanta also struggled to integrate its African American population.  Believe it or not, most libraries in the South were segregated until the 1960s (almost 100 years after the war) making them inaccessible to 45% of Atlanta’s post war population.  These events created a uniquely southern library story.  However there is a similarity ... Andrew Carnegie, our library hero.  In the 1890s Eugene Mitchell, from the Young Men’s Library Association, negotiated a deal with Carnegie.  Mitchell was the President of the YMLA, an Atlanta subscription library started way back in 1867.  Carnegie agreed to give $100,000 and the City of Atlanta offered $5,000 a year for ongoing expenses but it wasn’t enough. As the library board despaired, Annie Wallace, the YMLA’s librarian went back to Carnegie to persuade him to contribute more to the cause.  I don’t know how she did it but Carnegie upped his offer by $45,000, which allowed the project to move forward.  In 1902, Annie Wallace stood behind the circulation desk as the first librarian when the doors opened on Atlanta’s Public Library!  Although this classical marble beauty no longer stands on the corner of Forsyth St. and Carnegie Way, there is new, equally stunning, library in its place ready and willing to carry Atlanta into the future by fulfilling its mission and  “providing open access to ideas and information, affording personal and, ultimately, community benefits”.