Stand Up and Be Counted!
July 2, 2008 – 4:15 am by tanyaThere has been a spate of op-ed pieces about the Main Branch Library lately. Kathy Allavie started the run with her editorial, “A boxy monstrosity”. I believe the piece attempted to co-opt the preservation movement by suggesting that when preservationists mean modern is significant, they are talking about post-and-beam case study houses by Neutra et al, and that a modern building should “look good” and “fit in” to be significant. What? I guess it’s nice to be able to use totally subjective standards as proof that your opinion is a fact. And if it isn’t a certain kind of modernism (though Neutra made some fine houses), it isn’t worth saving? Oh come on!
Steve Lech, president of the Riverside Historical Society responded by giving Ms. Allavie the criteria she requested. I thought he did a good job of explaining what was special about the library and why her opinion underscored a real challenge modernism faces - aesthetic chauvinism and widespread apathy towards the next generation of historic architecture.
Dan Bernstein kicked matters up a notch Tuesday by adding outright hostility toward the library building, suggesting we could get the Bush administration to blow it up by pretending it was a North Korean nuclear reactor. I don’t usually read his column (or the rest of the paper, really), but I happened on it in the cafeteria at work and saw that he was talking about the Main Library. I realize he’s trying to be funny, but I’ve been too discouraged by all the negativity about the library and downtown modern buildings in general to find it even smirkworthy.
I don’t think I’ve yet found a decision-making body in Riverside who has any real sympathy for Mid-Century modernism, and it’s sad because I hear from a lot of people my age who appreciate this stuff and think the library is neat. Allavie thinks the rising interest in modernism is nostalgia from boomers who are misty-eyed over their childhood, but I think she’s completely off the mark - it’s the generations hence who have grown up with these buildings as fixtures in the landscape and absorbed the lessons they have to teach about ideas, optimism, and community. As with schools, libraries are among the first architect-designed buildings children get to experience as their own, and this library with its monumental, classical form is a temple of literacy, given to them by a generation that believed they could put a man on the moon and do much more.
So far I’ve found that UCR has the only other monumental New Formalist buildings in Riverside that could rival the Main Library. I love walking through that campus, it feels like a place where a person could invent something important or challenge stale ideas. But none of those buildings are downtown. The County Law Library comes close to rivaling the Main Library, but it is a later example with perhaps a different context. So there it is. You may have found examples of New Formalism that you find more compelling - if so then share.
If you agree that the existing Main Branch Library is valuable to Riverside’s architectural heritage, you should say something now, before any expansion plan that would demolish or obscure it gains steam. Write a letter to the editor of the Press Enterprise, call your councilperson, speak up around town. Hopefully it doesn’t devolve into a silly popularity contest, but if enough people can convey coherently why they like the Main Library just the way it is, maybe the Kathy Allavies of this City will actually begin to “get” it and become more circumspect about the project at hand.
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