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The new library contains a rare book room housing some 250 of the system's 400 rare books and a number of valuable art objects; a 60-seat meeting room which will be named the Louise Crawford Meeting Room in honor of the first librarian who served from 1934 until her retirement in 1959 and worked to make the library a permanent institution.
She died in 1965.
For the first time, the county bookmobile can be loaded and unloaded in an area protected from the weather. A large garage, easily accessible from the staff entrance, is located on the Ulman Avenue side of the building.
Architect Fred Wagner said he is pleased with the structure, a difficult-to-come-by product of requirements and circumstances over which he had no control.
Its irregular shape, for instance, was virtually dictated by the five-sided plot on which it is situated. The lot has no parallel sides and Wagner said the "logical rectangle" would have touched the property boundaries on all sides.
"The point of the sawtooth and odd projecting shapes was to better utilize the piece of property," he said.
Constructed of concrete block with stucco exterior, the building is one on which Wagner hesitates to hang a style label.
"Contemporary probably comes closest," he said. "The building says it was built in 1975-76."
Different colored walla, both in the main reading room and in the children’s room on the east side, are a striking feature of the library's interior. Each of the walls is a different hue, chosen deliberately to “add a feeling of delight and diversity" in an otherwise necessarily subdued area, Wagner said. The colors also add an identification advantage. A librarian who can't leave the charge desk can easily direct an unfamiliar patron to shelves "over near the purple wall," Wagner said.
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BSL 1970 To 1976 Newspaper-Clippings-BSL-'70-'76-(24)
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