Posts about MLK Library

An anchor of downtown since its opening in August 1972, the library was the city's first public memorial to the slain civil rights leader. Momentum to build a new central library began during the second mayoral administration of Anthony Williams. Released in November 2006, a report by the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Task Force recommended an overhaul of the neighborhood branches and the replacement of "the current functionally obsolete central library."

With a price tag of nearly $300 million, President Bush proposed $30 million in federal funds for a new downtown library. The current site of CenterCity DC was discussed as the most logic location. However, Williams' administration was unable to push a proposal through the DC Council.

Backed by a new administration, the building, designed by pioneering architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, became a historic landmark in late June 2007, preventing its demolition.

The DCPL Board of Trustees first mentioned the ULI panel at their meeting last month. When a smattering of questions arose about the intent of the panel, and whether the library's name honoring MLK was safe, it was clarified that no matter where the central library is located, it will retain Martin Luther King Jr.'s name, and continue to be a memorial to him.

Problems at the library

Since Cooper arrived in August 2006, MLK Library has undergone important functional and cosmetic upgrades making the building more inviting. The public bathrooms are no longer dungeons, the Black Studies and Children's Divisions have been refurbished, and a metal detector no longer greets visitors upon entry. The Adaptive Services Division, helping the deaf community, visually impaired, older adults, veterans and injured service people, received updated technology, the light plane of the ceiling of the Great Hall was revamped to better illuminate the cavernous lobby, and in 2009 a new room opened for teens.

However, MLK Library is still perceived as a homeless shelter and nicknamed "MLK Mission." The pervasiveness of the homeless and those with mental health issues obscure the library's vast collections and resources, according to members of the library staff.

The homeless are supported by a network of social service agencies such as the United Planning Organization. In the morning and evening, buses to and from homeless shelters use the front entrance of the library as a drop-off and pick-up point. G Place NW, behind the library, was the location point until the Secret Service objected.

Basic neglect continues unabated as evidenced in a recent list of safety violations issued to the library by the DC Office of Risk Management. According to library staff, a federal employee visiting the second floor's Literature Division saw numerous ceiling lights out. The outage left stacks in the rear of the division eerily dark, a safety concern for both staff and patrons. A DCPL officer said men are often found sleeping in between the stacks. If processed by police it is not unusual to find they have an arrest warrant. Though the staff has been raising the issue for many years, only recently were the lights fixed, under threat of fine.

Future of MLK Library

"The design of the building, while iconic as architecture, has failed to create the type of loved, dynamic and heavily used central library that would best serve the city," says Terry Lynch, a community activist who served on Mayor Williams' Blue Ribbon Task Force on libraries. "It is past time for a state of the art, new central library and conversion of this building to a more appropriate, adaptive reuse."

Over the next year MLK's first floor will be undergoing significant changes. A solicitation for proposals to "complete the interior improvements to the Business Science and Technology Reading Room and the Great Hall" closed two months ago. Construction is planned to be completed by August 2012.

Robin Diener with the Library Renaissance Project says citizens have advocated for a Citizens Task Force on the Future of MLK since the Williams Administration. Diener says, "In our view, the information gathered by a ULI panel could be a very useful contribution to the complete picture, but it should be presented to a task force of library users from around the city that Mayor Vincent Gray should appoint."

The ULI panel will present their finding and recommendations November 18th, 9 am to 11 am at MLK Library. The public is invited and encouraged to participate.

According to the statement, the library's local budget was reduced from $35.2 million in FY 2011 to $34.4 million in FY2012. Increases to provide staff and operate new libraries opening in the next fiscal year were offset by cuts to the book budget, operating hours, and other areas; ultimately creating a loss of $700,000. Although nearly a half dozen new or renovated libraries have opened since the fall of 2009, over the past five years nearly 100 full-time positions have been cut.

"In these wonderful, beautiful new buildings that we have built," says Toni White-Richardson, "if we keep cutting the staff, patrons are going to have to go get their own key, let themselves into the building, and the way the book budget looks they're going to have to bring their own books to read." White-Richardson is President of AFSCME 1808, which represents more than 250 DCPL employees. She testified at an April public hearing about the libraries.

When asked by Councilmember Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), then Chairman of the Committee on Libraries, Parks, and Recreation, if MLK should be closed on Sundays, Richardson responded, "I sit in MLK everyday—I look out my window, ok, I can hear, see, feel, and smell the energy that's downtown, in that corridor. We consider ourselves to be the cultural center" and to close the library would hurt the vitality of the area.

With the summer's committee re-shuffling by Council Chair Kwame Brown, Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) now heads the committee that oversees libraries. After public remarks at a recent book sale at MLK, Wells said in order for Sunday hours to be restored there have to be two things: a public will or demand and money in the budget. Since taking helm of the library committee, his office has fielded repeated calls and inquiries about MLK's Sunday hours.

According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and other sources, the budget figure needed to keep MLK open on Sunday is $316,000. In separate emails, Brown said, "As a father of two small children, I support keeping libraries open on Sundays." When asked for specifics on how MLK's Sunday hours could be restored, Brown wrote, "I will look for all options."

"There's been a renaissance for libraries," says Emily Sheketoff, Executive Director of the American Library Association's Washington Office, "as librarians we've recognized that our service to the community has had to change."

In FY 2012 DCPL's overall share of the budget has been reduced to two-thirds of one percent. These levels are consistent with national trends. According to Sheketoff, the Library Services and Technology Act, the only federal program exclusively for libraries, funded across Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and related agencies' appropriations bill was cut by 11% or $24.5 million in the most recent federal budget.

The Mayor, President, and Congress are guilty of library short sightedness, Sheketoff, a city resident, said, by being "penny wise and pound foolish to not invest in libraries that build good citizens and good employees."

Libraries provide many services beyond providing books. They help jumpstart school readiness through active children's programming and they also provide meeting spaces to community groups. Additionally, they provide free computer classes to those who graduated before entry level jobs required online applications.

Libraries are where the rubber meets the road when it comes to meeting the basic service needs of many District residents. From applying for unemployment insurance to applying for a job at Best Buy, and even signing up for parts of Medicare, libraries play a vital role in our society.

"The fact that all of our branch libraries are not open on Sundays only speaks to the lack of governmental commitment to help out the people in the city," maintains Philip Pannell, a former member of the DC Public Library Board of Trustees.

Pannell, a resident of Congress Heights, asserts closed libraries disproportionally impact certain areas of the city. "It is particularly devastating to the economically challenged neighborhoods because you have kids right here in Ward 8 who don't have computers, they don't have encyclopedias or dictionaries. In many cases there are dysfunctional households that are not conducive to studying."

He wrly added, "What is the point of building the new libraries that are absolutely beautiful and then when it comes to a Sunday you have kid's noses pressed up against the window looking inside to a building that is not helping them?"

In nearby jurisdictions, Sunday hours vary. Seven of Montgomery County's twenty libraries maintain Sunday hours. Howard County libraries are open Sundays during the school year. Three of Arlington's nine branches are open 1pm - 9pm Sunday, and Alexandria's main branch is open on Sunday. All Prince George's County branches are closed Sundays.

Without its august associations with its namesake and its designer, the MLK Library would have been demolished or gutted during the last real estate boom. That would never happen to the Old City Library, regardless of its historical merit as one of Andrew Carnegie's.

That building endures because there is something attractive and innately human in its scale. It elicits a sense of reverence and respect appropriate for its purpose. One cannot say the same for the MLK Library or the projects designed by TEN Arquitectos.

Of the West End project, Weber approvingly writes the viewer perceives the structure as a "pixilated glass amoeba," which is nearly as good a simile as that used by an architect who once appeared before ANC 6C who described his project as "two tectonic plates colliding." The Glass Amoeba overhangs the public space—an expedient trick that is about maximizing profit rather than design.

It reminds me of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. It's mass looms above the pedestrian, which always gives me a sense of unease as I walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. What they lack in an architectural idiom grounding them within an historic setting, neighboring architectural blunders aside, they make up for in shock value. They are stunning, but so is much of pop culture and neither will stand the test of time.

There are very few examples in DC where "new" (post-World War II) traditional design is done well. The Ronald Reagan building approaches it. The Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building alludes to it.

But in the wrong hands traditional architecture becomes kitsch. Some of the most vocal opponents of the current Amy Weinstein design for the Hine School site are neighbors that live in the 300 block of 8th Street SE, an example of 1970-ish infill where misapplication of traditional form is on display.

Turn the corner at 8th and C Street, SE and it continues, complete with curb cuts and garage entrances the degrade the pedestrian experience. Were these structures to be subjected to design review today, they would not be permitted.

Architecture can be a restorative act. When an architect takes cues from community and not her or his creative impulse, the design result can reconcile the built and natural environment, healing the mistakes of previous generations. I often think of what was lost—and what we were given—in the Southwest waterfront during the Great Society endeavors of the 1960s.

Architecture and urbanism in practice should seek to form a whole, to make something complete. Each element, be it a room, a house, a porch, a garden, a block, a neighborhood, or a city, provides transition and each element relies upon the previous.

This shared state of transition is the underlying principle of unity found in all things. It applies to cities, to ecosystems and agriculture, to art, to human systems of organization as bureaucratic and inefficient as Congress and to things as natural and enduring as families.

I think about this in the case of Hine School project at Eastern Market. I sympathize when I hear residents say they want something that is in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. Those parts of the Hill we love the most, we love for their "completeness."

Eastern Market is already "complete", not simply because of the attention Adolf Cluss gave to brick course and cornice (and, after the fire, the careful hands that restored it), but of the neighborhood that exists around it; the activity and personal connections formed through commerce and community across generations.

Paraphrasing architect Steven Mouzon: "If a building cannot be loved, it will not endure. And if does not endure, it is not sustainable." Progressive planners and some architects get this concept of sustainability. We demand it in our transportation systems, in our food systems. There is an interest in all things local. Why not in our buildings? Why is it that an architects practicing in the early 20th century understood this balance better than many practicing today?

[The FBI building] is a street-killing building; it takes up an entire block. Yet there were supposed to be stores on the avenue. J. Edgar Hoover nixed them and said, "No stores in my building."

Forgey criticizes other pedestrian-unfriendly structures, like Rosslyn's walkways that keep pedestrians above the streets:

It was an idealistic notion that was a total failure in practical terms. It just turned out to be not very pleasant to walk above the cars. The planners reduced the ground level to a strange "no place" zone with odd little stores. My favorite over there is the church with the gas station underneath it.

Arlington (other than Rosslyn) gets high marks for its smart development around Metro, and Bethesda ("they did it pretty well") wins over Silver Spring ("awkward"), something I definitely agree with. Forgey has especially harsh words for the security barriers that closed Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House and the fenced-off grounds of the Capitol.

When he gets to the controversial MLK Library, though, Forgey's reverence for great architects of the past trumps the human consideration. He loves the reading rooms with big, open windows from the inside, but dismisses criticism (including the interviewer's opinion of it as "an ugly combination of steel, brick, and glass"), because "the modernist aesthetic of the architect, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, isn't for everyone, but he developed it very rigorously, and he was without question one of the great architects of the 20th century."

So what if Mies was "rigorous" and a "great architect"? We should decide about buildings based on whether they work, not whether architects study the creator in school. Forgey says, about the reading rooms, "it's about inside/outside." If something is nice on the inside (many disagree), but forbidding on the outside, does that make its outside any more street-killing than the FBI building or the rest of the Federal Triangle?