Along with thousands of others, Ella Simmons waited outside.
When the doors finally opened, she zipped up the escalator — colored a gaudy chartreuse — to explore this city’s shimmering new downtown library.
To Simmons, 76, the glass-and-steel structure was otherworldly and disorienting. There were no wood-paneled walls, wooden desks or rabbit warrens of dimly lighted bookshelves. Taking in the bright colors, the acres of glass and the overwhelming light, the Seattle resident said she remembered thinking that this place was built for her grandchildren.
Still, she said, it worked for her.
Simmons, who doesn’t own a computer, easily found the genealogy section, corralled a helpful librarian and logged onto a computer. Within 15 minutes, she had found what she was looking for, a 1900 U.S. Census record of her great-grandfather Hiram Speer’s farm in Dodge City, Kan.
Simmons’ adventure — the strong reaction to the architecture, the satisfying find of information — is exactly what the city’s chief librarian and architects said they hope will happen every day at the $165 million Seattle Central Library, which opened Sunday after five years of planning and construction.
“This is a time when a lot of people sit behind their computers,” said Deborah Jacobs, the city librarian. “They need a gathering space, and we’d rather it be a library than a shopping mall.”
Library planners hired the firm of fashionable Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to create a visually arresting structure — but the building’s form was reined in many times to suit the function outlined by Jacobs: that the first library of the 21st Century would represent “democracy, literacy and a sense of community.”
The library has drawn raves from national critics, who say it’s the most important library, and possibly the best architecture, built in decades.
William Dietrich of the Seattle Times called the library “arguably the most striking and imaginative piece of Seattle architecture since the Space Needle [built in 1962]. . . . Not just a library, but a community hub and global showplace that transcends its own city block. . . . A time capsule of civic chutzpah. . . . The library embraces its surroundings in a completely new way.”
`Giant air-conditioning vent’
But not everyone has been so positive. Letter writers to the library and the Seattle Times have, respectively, compared the building to “a giant air-conditioning vent,” and “a jail designed by Frank Lloyd Wrong.”
Joshua Ramus, a Seattle-area native and the partner in Koolhaas’ firm who was in charge of the design process, said the architects carefully considered a public library’s changing role in society, and the current and future place for books, computers and librarians.
“The responsibility of a public library is to meet the needs of the lowest, not the highest,” Ramus said. “That was something we had to learn.”
They drew a building that is, essentially, a stack of boxes with some pulled off-center, all enclosed in a decorative, steel-and-glass exoskeleton that gives stability in earthquakes, Ramus said. Each box independently handles a library function: the book stacks, meeting rooms, office space and a parking garage. Around the boxes and enclosed by the glass skin, the designers created public spaces: a top-floor reading room, a high-concept reference desk and a public plaza.
The library is intended to be flexible enough to handle information needs for the next century. The books on display — arrayed in a continuous Dewey Decimal display on gently sloping ramps called the “Books Spiral” — can double to 1.5 million. Lightweight aluminum-panel flooring is easily lifted to rewire rooms with more advanced technology. The furniture is functional — spill-proof plastic and hard foam chairs and basic worktables — and inexpensive to replace.
There are more than 400 computers for visitors, more than five times as many as in the 1960 structure it replaced. Dozens of other desks are wired to plug in laptops, and a free wireless Internet system reaches every corner of the building.
In an age of ubiquitous information, librarians are viewed as “curators” of paper and digital data, Ramus said. In the reference section, renamed the “Mixing Chamber,” librarians don’t sit behind desks but instead refer people to specialists by communicating with wireless voice-recognition communicators hanging around their necks.
The positive response to the Seattle library is much different than the reaction to the Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center, which opened in 1991, at a cost of $144 million.
A Chicago Tribune critic described the red brick and granite library as 19th Century “architecture in a time warp.” Its main public space, the 9th floor Winter Garden, has largely failed to engage the public’s imagination, critics have said.
Carla Hayden, president of the Chicago-based American Library Association and executive director of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, says the most successful modern libraries give people compelling reasons to visit and return.
“When they walk through that door, you try to do something that touches them as an individual, that makes them feel that they want to explore and come back,” Hayden said. “Once they get there, you have to deliver” with accessible materials and staff.
Fred Schlipf, an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who analyzes libraries’ space needs, says libraries now compete with bookstores that have open stacks, comfy chairs and a permissive atmosphere. Schlipf, director of the Urbana Free Library, compares a first-rate public library to a farmers market, where people scan the goods on display, chat up the salespeople and stand around kibitzing.
That was happening in Seattle on opening day, which drew an estimaged 28,000 people.
In the children’s area, kids (and their parents) bounced on purple foam mushroom-shaped chairs and grabbed stacks of books to test the automated checkout system. On the higher floors, onlookers sought glimpses of Mt. Rainier and Elliott Bay.
Others did what people — from the well-dressed yuppies to the unwashed homeless — usually do in a public library. They read telephone books. They rifled through foreign language dictionaries. In the vast, second-floor public space, called the “Living Room,” a man put his head down on a table and slept, while others ate their lunches and read newspapers. In this city of coffee addicts, people can bring their cups — with lids — anywhere in the library. (Coffee is sold in an area called “The Living Room.”)
$196 million bond initiative
Seattle residents approved, during the height of the high-tech boom, a $196 million bond initiative to rebuild the central library and renovate or build 27 neighborhood branches. (Seattle’s wealthy donated another $82 million in private funds.)
The central library seems particularly likely to suit the local population’s intelligence and love of books. While Seattle’s library system ranks 19th in size nationally, its residents are the best-educated in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (49 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher). The city ranks first in bookstores per capita, according to a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater study.
Despite the rise (and sometimes fall) of this region’s powerhouses, including Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and the sitcom “Frasier,” many old-timers say the city has a lingering inferiority complex. They hope it will be eased by the library’s worldwide attention.
“This puts Seattle on the map in a big way,” said Ivan Leech, 77, who moved here in 1952.
To draw people from all city neighborhoods into the building, the library will make a particular effort in the first year to schedule lectures and special events, said Jacobs, the city librarian. In the coming weeks, the library will host computer classes for seniors and teens, an evening book group, a discussion about the legal and social ramifications of gay marriage, story time for youngsters and a lecture by author Isabel Allende.
“There was so much hype about this new library as an architectural wonder, it’s surprising that it still works as a library,” said Hugh Spitzer, 55, a bond lawyer on a top-to-bottom tour with his family.
His 15-year-old daughter, Jenny, added, “It’s really cool.”
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Comparing two modern, big-city libraries
SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY
Date opened: May 23, 2004
Building cost: $165 million
Square feet: 362,987 square feet
Visitors daily: 8,000 expected this year
Hours open per week: 58 hours, 7 days
Open stacks: 750,000 items
Percent of total collection open to public: 75 percent
Miles of bookshelves: 30 miles
Computers: More than 400
Technical innovations:
– Voice-recognition communicators for librarians
– Self-checkout
– Automated book handling and sorting
Other features:
– Free wireless Internet (WiFi)
– Beverages in lidded containers allowed everywhere
– Pastry and coffee cart in lobby
HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY CENTER
Date opened: Oct. 7, 1991
Building cost: $144 million
Square feet: 756,000 square feet
Visitors daily: 5,000
Hours open per week: 60 hours, 7 days
Open stacks: 1.7 million items
Percent of total collection open to public: 88 percent
Miles of bookshelves: 70.85 miles
Computers: More than 250
Technical innovations:
– Talking Book Center
– Book conservation and preservation lab
Other features:
– Planning a WiFi system
– Civil War collection
– Extensive public art
Sources: The Seattle Public Library and the Chicago Public Library
