Dr. Lucy Jones fondly remembers the days when she would take her children to the Pasadena Central Library.
“That’s the building where I taught my kids to read,” she said. “… It was an experience.”
It was a moment of added poignancy for the renowned seismology expert, who like many in a city with a tradition of reverence to its architectural past, was absorbing the sudden closure of the nearly 100-year-old, multi-floored, Spanish Colonial Revival-styled gem.
Just like that, the first building standing among the city’s treasured trio of civic center landmarks, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was shuttered.
But as word got around, it was becoming clear that it was fortunate that the building — which today hosts 55,000 people each month — was even still standing.
That’s because the library is a URM, shorthand for unreinforced masonry building. Or, as Dr. Jones often calls them, an FPR — a Future Pile of Rubble.
Somehow, the library has eluded a 1993 city ordinance — a year before the 6.7 Northridge Earthquake leveled many URMs in the San Fernando Valley — requiring all such structures to be retrofitted, vacated or demolished.
At the core of Tuesday’s library closure was an assessment performed by KPFF for capital improvements at the library, where city officials wanted to install a new alarm and fire sprinkler system.
Instead, what they got was “devastating” news from the engineers: The building — built in the 1920s, with renovations completed in 1966 and 1984 — is supported by unreinforced masonry walls, which act as the gravity and seismic “resisting system.”
But there’s no other system of columns supporting the load. In other words, in a moderate or large earthquake, its walls could collapse under the vertical forces, according to an April 29 summary of the report to the city.
On Wednesday, officials said the closure could last multiple years. Cost estimates have been bounced around, in the tens of millions of dollars, but there was nothing official.
A plan was in the works. It will include what to do with the library’s collection of 359,000 books, magazines, art, music and other resources. Complicating matters is that the city’s nine other branches are also pretty full.
“We’re still in the early stages of developing a plan,” said city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. “I don’t think this is a short-term fix. It’s not as easy as just packing things up and storing them. You have to preserve them and ensure they are in a safe environment.”
There will be funding issues to decide. There will be the scope of work to be performed.
In a city that savors a tradition of promoting the historical value of many of its old structures, the closure was a real blow, mixed with surprise over how such a prized building could fall off the retrofitting radar.
“It was a shock, No. 1,” said Sue Mossman, executive director of Pasadena Heritage, an advocacy and preservation group. “People were just starting to come back. Then suddenly, this very upsetting news. And boom. It closes and it’s going to be closed for a long time.”
Mossman said the “remarkably designed” library not getting on the list of properties to be retrofitted was definitely “somebody’s oversite.” “But it’s also true that looking at that building from the outside, or the inside, it is not obvious that there is a brick construction there.”
City officials on Wednesday acknowledged the oversight, but said the energy right now is on a restoration plan and figuring out what to do with its collection.
City Councilman John J. Kennedy, who represents the Third District, in which the library is located, said there was no active concealment of the problem. But he called for a renewed look at all of the city’s historic buildings “to ensure that they are safe and restored to their former glory.”
“It is a futile exercise to engage in a ‘blame-game’ mentality,” he said. “Now that we know of the problem, let’s figure out how to fix it by engaging city staff, community experts, along with the help of world-class contractors.”
Fixing it, of course, will be costly.
The city was already engaged in a library capital improvement plan, which prompted the assessment in the first place.
Kennedy said “Pasadena must rise to the challenge,” perhaps even donating to help preserve the library.
He pointed to the example of France, where donors stepped up in the rebuilding and restore Notre Dame, badly damaged in a 2019 fire.
The library itself underwent restorations and renovations in 1984 and 1990, according to the city.
The Pasadena Public Library Foundation paid for all interior restoration with the exception of the book stacks, which were funded through a combination of federal, state and local funds, according to the city.
Mossman, whose group was involved in the library’s expansion work in the 1980s, said its telling that the library hasn’t succumbed to the shaking around it for 100 years. It is a sign that the building’s architect Myron Hunt and H.C. Chambers designed a good building for its time.
“(Hunt) was very cognizant of seismic issues in his day,” she said, noting that he even left drawings for future work on the building. “It’s reassuring to me that this building, which is 96 years old, has withstood several earthquakes in its life. It’s sustained no damage in its life. There were no signs of pending collapse, so that speaks well of the building.”
But Mossman also echoed Jones — that as well-designed as the building was for its time, “failure could be catastrophic.”
Jones noted that Pasadena has been fortunate not to have been severely impacted by quakes in the area.
The 1994 Northridge Earthquake leveled URMs in the San Fernando Valley, but Pasadena was spared. That was the result, she said, of a wave structure coming off the fault that spared Pasadena from highly intense shaking.
The 1971 Sylmar Earthquake did some damage in Pasadena, including at Caltech, Jones said. But still, the community was spared major catastrophic damage.
Since the Pasadena Central Library was built, the building got away without any “maximum credible shaking,” she said.
Pasadena sits above the Raymond, Sierra Madre and Eagle Rock faults, Jones said. Any one of them could cause the kind of shaking that would destroy the library building, she added.
“If you want this building to still be part of Pasadena after a large earthquake — one of the earthquakes we’re going to have — we have to do something,” Jones said.
Meanwhile, the library and its 65 employees were emerging from COVID-19-era lockdowns, only to be greeted with the news of a long-term closure of their workplace.
Going forward, Central Library staff will work out of other branches.
Pasadena will reopen four of its library branches for in-person service next week and expand hours at two others.
- On Tuesday, the Linda Vista library at 1281 Bryant St. and the San Rafael branch at 1240 Nithsdale Road will reopen.
- The next day, the Lamanda Park library at 140 S. Altadena Drive and the Santa Catalina branch at 999 E. Washington Blvd. will open their doors. The libraries will all operate at reduced capacity, but visitors will be able to browse the book collections, check-out materials, use public computers and access printing and copying services. Visitors will be required to wear face coverings and maintain physical distance from others.
- Beginning Tuesday, two other branches will expand their hours for in-person services — the Hastings branch at 3325 E. Orange Grove Blvd. and the La Pintoresca branch at 1355 N. Raymond Ave. Hastings will operate from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. La Pintoresca will be open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday.