Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2017 -

While older cities had already established public libraries with ambitious, purpose-built facilities, Los Angeles, starting in 1913, located its central library on two floors of a downtown office building--the commercial-style Metropolitan Building, now residential lofts. With WW I impeding efforts to realize an expressly designed library facility, it was not until the 1920s that funds were in place to achieve that goal. Having won the commission via a two-stage competition, architect Bertram Goodhue, a committed Gothicist for much of his career, stood out for his ease with Spanish colonial motifs. Along with the Nebraska State Capitol building, the Los Angeles Central Library marked the culmination of the architect's career with original designs that blended a streamlined, free interpretation of classicism, beaux-arts planning, and monumentality into what came to be known as medieval modernism. With comprehensive notes and a wonderfully detailed and navigable index, this fine example of scholarship is comprehensive in its story of the growth of support for a public library in Los Angeles; of the evolution of early designs with a signature, central ribbed dome and tiled pyramid-topped tower; and of the sculpture and murals that make the building a true Gesamtkunstwerk, or synthesis of art forms. The study is essential for all architecture and urban history collections.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.