For many of its 34-year existence, the Harold Washington Library Heart has been like a runner trapped between third base and residential: A fantastic advance, however not fairly a rating.
The town’s principal library, 400 S. State St., helped revive the South Loop — one thing for which the constructing doesn’t practically get sufficient credit score.
And the highest ground winter backyard is likely one of the metropolis’s finest inside areas, with its courtyard-like design that’s awash in pure mild courtesy of a glass paneled domed ceiling.
Amongst its faults, the library has all the time gave the impression to be on the protection, from its windowless floor ground to a design that forces patrons to stroll what looks like a mile of first ground hallways and negotiate a cold-looking and cavernous principal foyer earlier than having the ability to lay eyes on a ebook.
The town — the world — is loads completely different than it was when the constructing opened in 1991. Individuals now use libraries in a wider vary of how. And the South Loop is creating right into a neighborhood of schools, dormitories, residential conversions and eating places.
Can the Harold Washington Library’s programming and design adapt change additionally?
Chicago Public Library officers, consultants and stakeholders have been pondering that query this spring and summer time, in a sequence of conferences looking for concepts to enhance the constructing’s design and patrons’ expertise.
“We’ve the most important central library within the nation in Chicago,” Chicago Public Library Commissioner Chris Brown stated. “And as , it’s over 30 years [old]. It was constructed pre-internet … constructed for a special time. So we’re out of the pandemic, as we’re how the Loop is being utilized, we need to have this constructing proceed to serve the town as finest as it will probably.”
A restaurant — and tech enhancements
The train, led by library officers, the nonprofit Civic Consulting Alliance and Blue Cottage — the consultancy arm of structure agency CannonDesign, is the primary important reexamination of the constructing since its building.
The main target teams have provide you with vary of concepts aimed toward bringing extra exercise and makes use of to the library, together with increasing the third ground pc room so it offers instruction for rising applied sciences and placing a restaurant within the winter backyard.
“On common, persons are staying right here for nicely over an hour,” Brown stated. “[A cafe] would simply incentivize their time in that area … give individuals extra incentive whereas they’re in that area to do their college work or simply be. I believe that might be an actual win.”
The group additionally preferred the concept of activating the inside areas subsequent to library’s few floor ground home windows. The transfer would create a wanted dialogue between the within of the constructing and the sidewalk life outdoors.
And what about that hike patrons need to take earlier than encountering a ebook? Brown stated the group has talked about including parts of the library’s assortment to these areas.
Blue Cottage Consulting Principal Chris Lambert stated one proposal was a everlasting exhibition on the lifetime of Mayor Harold Washington, who died months earlier than the beginning of the 1987 competitors to construct and design the library, and different Chicago-related gadgets may very well be relocated into a brand new climate-controlled web site throughout the constructing.
“We additionally assume there’s a chance right here — if we place this in the precise method — it turns into a showpiece,” Lambert stated. “It turns into a factor that celebrates Chicago’s historical past in an actual vibrant method.”
It was the discuss of the city again in 1987, when Washington introduced a global competitors to pick out a workforce that might design and construct a brand new principal public library. A lot so, the PBS program “Nova” devoted an episode — one in all its finest — to the scramble to create and choose a profitable design.
The design competitors was seen as Chicago getting again its groove as an architectural chief. The flashy State of Illinois constructing had opened simply two years earlier than. Might the brand new library be the following step?
Chicagoans may vote — non-binding, after all — on their favourite design.
5 finalists have been chosen, with the nod going to the SEBUS Group, a workforce that includes Chicago structure agency Hammond, Beeby & Babka.
With appears extra impressed by post-fire Chicago than the approaching twenty first century, the library’s design took a good bit of flak. In my relative youth again then, I assumed the constructing’s ersatz Eighteen Nineties structure appeared as authentically Chicago because the Previous Chicago Amusement Park dome.
Taking a look at it now, Hammond, Beeby & Babka’s answer was the very best entry among the many finalists. It gave the town a library that honors Chicago’s architectural previous whereas being hefty sufficient to carry its personal alongside the vast Ida B. Wells Drive and subsequent to the historic former flagship Sears division retailer at 401 S. State St.
Apart from, the library is just nineteenth century on three sides. The constructing’s less-visible Plymouth Courtroom facade is predominantly a glass curtain wall so sharp and tight, Alfred Hitchcock may’ve run the opening credit of “North by Northwest” throughout it.
Not one of the library’s structure could be considerably modified beneath the measures mentioned by the group. Brown stated creating thematic hyperlinks between the library and the adjoining L cease and no matter occurs at Pritzker Park may additionally happen.
All of this takes cash. Numerous it. Brown stated the following steps embrace turning these concepts and suggestions right into a doc that may be offered to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. And to the native and nationwide philanthropic neighborhood as nicely.
As libraries stay beneath assault, defending and bettering them is a civic good and public necessity.
