Harold Washington Library Center
[Harold Washington Library Center (1991) Hammond, Beeby & Babka, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
It took the Chicago Public Library 15 years to relocate its main branch from Sheply Rutan & Coolidge's 1897-era nod to Classical architecture on Michigan Avenue, to Hammond, Beeby & Babka's 1991 postmodern statement on State Street. During that decade-and-a-half, three quarters of the 8 million volume, publically accessible collection spent time "temporarily," housed in an old warehouse.
[Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Finally though, in the Fall of 1991, the Harold Washington Library Center opened to the public. The journey to get to this block-long plot of land on South State Street was long and arduous, but the architects gave the citizenry an instantly recognizable landmark.
[Harold Washington Library Winter Garden /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The journey from Michigan Avenue to State Street began in 1969 when librarians alerted city officials that their grand Tiffany mosaic-lined, glass-domed structure was out-of-date and out-of-room.
A plan was proposed that called for tearing down the old building and constructing a new facility on the same site. But that scheme was filed away within a year for an alternative idea which called for incorporating the older building into a newly built facility. Then politics got in the way. After the turmoil of four mayoral administrations in a 7 year period, finally, in 1986 during Mayor Harold Washington's tenure, the city and the Library Board picked a location and floated a $175 million bond issue to provide funds for the new building, as well as the entire city-wide, library branch system. It took $144 million of those dollars to complete the central library, but unfortunately Mayor Washington didn't live long enough to see the facility completed, he died of a heart attack November 25, 1987, and the building was named in his honor.
See the original library at: Culturally Centered, and one of the buildings considered for the new library at: Three R's - Rothschild, Renovation & Reuse.
Posted by designslinger at 7/19/2011 3:28 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Hammond Beeby and Babka libraries State Street South Loop
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Hammond Beeby and Babka libraries State Street South Loop
I've tried for years to like this library -- really -- but it just doesn't work for me. Regardless of how needed it was, or how good the archiving system might be, or the number of private-study areas it might have, it's NOT user friendly. And it looks from the outside like an unfortunate mating of Richardsonian Romanesque and Michael Graves that should have been aborted before it saw the construction site. I love the whimsy of the owls on top, but that's it. The interior design certainly should have been a lot more forward looking in terms of tech, preservation, and what future users would want or need. It wasn't. True, the modern standard, which might be best exemplified at the moment by the Cerritos, CA Millennium Library, still has flaws (like the huge amount of noise the Cerritos library interior produces); but we can learn from them. Yes, the central library **really** needed to move, but we could and should have found a better design than this. It was a mistake, and now it's an eyesore we're stuck with it -- like a sore that won't heal -- until something else can replace it (probably not for a few more decades, unfortunately).
One thought, however, does occur: what we really need for now are half a dozen more 'regional' libraries scattered throughout the city, in which some of the wealth of the main library can be redistributed. For example, the central library doesn't share its vast music recordings library for loan: you have to listen to it there, or not at all. In stark contrast, the suburban Metropolitan Library System, of which my own near suburb is a part, freely shares its musical recordings for loan -- and the collections don't suffer much for it. That sharing includes vinyl LPs, BTW, which is a boon to those of us who know that a good vinyl disc recording still beats a great digital one on CD/DVD for sound quality, given the same level of skill on the part of the recording studio and engineers. For listening pleasure, I'll take vinyl every time. But I digress.
The Harold Washington Library, not to put it too bluntly, sucks -- and it will continue to do so until something better replaces it. Meanwhile, some new regional branches in, say, Scottsdale-Auburn, Bridgeport, Edgebrook-Sauganash or Edison Park, and Homan Square and/or Austin would be welcome. Not that we'll be getting those any time soon ...
It isn't the best example of what a library building could be, and unfortunate that in a city that claims such an architectural heritage that the designers couldn't have pushed the envelope a little more, like the groundbreaking designs found around town 100 years earlier.