Added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 19, 1987

Can you imagine a metropolis like Los Angeles without local libraries? Before the 1890s, you had to go to the central library downtown to borrow reading material. Beginning In 1891, the Los Angeles Public Library’s head librarian Tessa Kelso (the namesake for LAPL’s digital collections database) began to recruit public elementary schools to hold circulating collections in the more far-flung parts of the city. Soon enough there were book deposit stations at businesses around Los Angeles. Those evolved into neighborhood branches housed in temporary buildings, and finally, by the 1910s, to the construction of permanent branch buildings.

If you were a book-hungry East Los Angeles resident back in 1900, before the area was renamed “Lincoln Heights,” you would go to a deposit station at Daly Street and Pasadena Avenue to sate your bibliophagia. Another one opened a few years later at 2609 East Main Street, and in late 1910 the two facilities merged to form the North East Branch Library. 

But it wasn’t until 1916 that the neighborhood had a forever library, the one that still exists today, and we owe it to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest Americans in history. His philanthropy is directly responsible for the construction of over 2500 public libraries around the world, including the first six LAPL branches, funded by a $210,000 Carnegie grant. The Lincoln Heights Branch was the fifth of those original six, and one of just three Carnegie libraries that still remain in LA proper (the other two are the Vermont Square Branch and Cahuenga Branch). 

Like all the Carnegie libraries, the Lincoln Heights Branch features prominent lighting fixtures near the front entrance, symbolizing enlightenment, and steps leading up to the entrance, a metaphor for ascension through the attainment of knowledge. This one’s got a semi-circular floor plan that sets it apart from the other Carnegies in LA, though. I imagine it looking like a piece of macaroni from space.

Architects Lester Hudson Hibbard and H. Bryant Cody patterned the elegant, Italian renaissance revival-style facade after the 16th century Villa Papa Giulio, the luxurious home of Pope Julius III in Rome. Inside, light fills the double-tall, main reading space through clerestory windows. A giant hand-carved wooden pediment frames the doorway on the way back out, just as it has since the library opened.

I love how this library’s history has connected to and evolved along with the community it serves in ways both obvious and subtle. Even the Italian-ness of its design fits with the early 20th century history of Lincoln Heights. Back when the library was built, Lincoln Heights was becoming a haven for Italian immigrants – folks like Santo Cambianica, who founded the San Antonio Winery nearby in 1917, and John Lanza, who opened Lanza Brothers Market in 1926. Both businesses are still going strong today. By the 1960s, Lincoln Heights was an increasingly Mexican-American neighborhood, and in fact in 1975, the community voted to give the library the Spanish name “Biblioteca del Pueblo de Lincoln Heights” in 1975. As of 2000, Lincoln Heights was more than 70% Latino. 

Another interesting connection between library and surrounding community is embedded in its name. From 1916 through 1919, the library was called the North East Branch. It was rechristened Lincoln Heights Branch after the neighborhood itself changed its name, from East Los Angeles to Lincoln Heights, in honor of the local Abraham Lincoln High School. The same thing happened with the expansive Lincoln Park (one of the city’s oldest), formerly named Eastlake Park until the 1910s.

While the great Abraham Lincoln has no known personal ties to Lincoln Heights, his eminent presence is still felt at the library. For years, a bas relief sculpture of honest Abe sat on one of the shelves in the main wing (see above). It was made by Lincoln Heights resident Julia Bracken Wendt, the same sculptor who made the “Three Muses” statue in the rotunda of the Natural History Museum (see visit #123), and also put Abe on a pedestal in Lincoln Park. The bas relief is no longer there, but I did find this tiny bust on a shelf in the back. 

As with many of the original LAPL branches, the Lincoln Heights Branch closed in 1989, after sustaining damage in the 1987 Whittier narrows earthquake. It took five years to raise the bond money required to earthquake-proof and renovate it; in the meantime the library operated out of a temporary site at 2217 N. Broadway, just a couple blocks away. The original building reopened again around 1995. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+Lincoln Heights Branch’s NRHP nomination form

+Thematic submission to the NRHP for LA Public Library Branches (1913-1930)

+Garner, Scott: “Neighborhood Spotlight: Lincoln Heights was L.A.’s first suburb” (LA Times, 2019) 

+Sanford, Tiffney: “Dig Los Angeles: Lincoln Heights Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library” (LAPL Blog, 2022)

+“A Brief Lincoln Heights Branch Library History” (LAPL.org)

+Hand Book of the Branch Libraries (Los Angeles Public Library, 1928) (PDF)

+Origins of the Los Angeles Public Library Branch System, 1891-1923 (Ran Gust, 2008)