MLK Finally Declared Historic
Don’t tear down MLK, the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board said on Thursday.
The board granted historic-landmark status to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, giving the deteriorating glass-and-steel building a legal protection against getting demolished.
Former Mayor Anthony A. Williams broached a plan last year to sell the building and build a new central library on the old Convention Center site. The board’s decision came a day after the Washington Examiner reported the Adrian Fenty administration’s decision to shelve Williams’ plans.
Now, thanks to the efforts of former D.C. Public Library trustee Alex Padro, the library has been protected as D.C.’s most notable example of modernist architecture; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed it in 1972. It is also the only downtown edifice that bears King’s name.
The city supported the historic-landmark application, something that Padro says could not have happened when Williams was mayor. “For years there was this battle raging between Williams and the library preservation and advocacy community,” Padro says. “Finally, [now] that we have a new administration, and Williams is out of the way…we get the board to approve it.”
Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper says there are no plans yet for any relocation of the library’s services. As for the building, the board will now have to approve any change to the first floor or the exterior. “We don’t know at this point that [MLK] will not always be the library,” Cooper says. “We also don’t know at this point that [it] will always be the library.”
4 Responses to “MLK Finally Declared Historic”
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July 5th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Ugh… That’s a major blow to those who know anything about the current best practices in urban library architecture and operations. While that building may be historically significant, it is also probably the worst big city main branch in the entire country. The historical designation makes it impossible to recreate it as an egaging 21st-century public library space. Ms. Cooper is certainly doing all she can, but trying to upgrade the place is basically a waste of time and money. Can we please sell the building to the Smithsonian and move on with building something that actually works?
July 5th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Yeah, I was afraid something like this would happen. I work at a law firm library at Metro Center and occasionally use the main branch for their general reference collection, which is much better than ours. Between the gigantic unused waste of space that is the atrium, the gigantic trash cans collecting dripping water in the darkened stairwells, and the electric fans wheezing to support the inadequate ventilation system, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a poor environment for patrons, employees or books. I was in Pittsburgh, one of the more economically depressed cities in the area, and their main branch was such a show stopper. It made me sad for the residents of DC, myself included, that we are forced to settle for such inadequate and substandard facilities.
Preserve the building, fine, but build us another library please! W.W.M.L.K.Jr.D? I can’t say for sure but I would like to imagine that he’d advocate for us to have a decent library. Let’s design one that will suit the needs of our residents, our librarians, and our collection that Dr. King would be proud to have his name on.
July 7th, 2007 at 7:38 am
As a school librarian visiting DC during the last week of June, I needed to get some information and walking next to the libray decided to check it over there. I believe as I could see, that the library served not only it’s patrons but many travelers like me. Is in a good location, but I feel that a Library who bears the name of Martin Luther King Jr. in the DC area deserves not only a legal protection against demolition but more financial assignation from the government and the private sector to keep the building giving a good or excelent service to the comunnity.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
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