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

It’s hard to believe that before the Vermont Square Branch Library opened in 1913, the City of Los Angeles didn’t own a single permanent library building. The reading rooms and “delivery stations” around the turn of the 20th century were located in schools, storefronts and firehouses. Even the Central Library didn’t have its own space – it moved from City Hall to the Homer Laughlin Building, home of Grand Central Market, and later occupied part of the third floor of Hamburger’s Department Store before moving to its forever home in 1926.

In a number of ways, the Vermont Square Branch was a pioneer. While not the first official branch of the LA library system (that honor goes to the Boyle Heights station, later known as the Benjamin Franklin Branch), Vermont Square was the first building in the Los Angeles Public Library system purpose-built as a library. 

It was also the first of six libraries in the City of LA funded by a $210,000 grant from the obscenely wealthy philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (only two others remain, the Cahuenga and Lincoln Heights branches). The Scotland-born industrialist started out in railroads and bridges, but his fortune skyrocketed in the 1870s when he founded a steel mill in Pittsburgh. After selling Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan in 1901, he instantly became one of the richest Americans in history. 

Carnegie had a reputation as a capitalist with a soft spot for the common man, with a general pro-union stance. As espoused in a pair of 1889 essays for North American Review, he believed in the power of wealth to improve society. But then came the Homestead Strike of 1892, during which more than a dozen people died at a Carnegie plant after hundreds of private Pinkerton security guards were sent in to break a strike. The incident immediately tarnished Carnegie’s image. Allies on both sides of the Atlantic criticized him publicly, and chambers of commerce denied him membership. In Pittsburgh, workers protested the library and museum he gifted the city.

Even if his philanthropy was born out of a guilty conscience, Carnegie put his money where his mouth was. Between 1883 and 1929, 10 years after his death, Carnegie’s cash was directly responsible for the construction of more than 2500 libraries around the world. I read a statistic that by the late 1920s, nearly half of the libraries in the United States were Carnegie libraries. 

Vermont Square was a fairly new neighborhood when it got its library. In the fall of 1905 we start seeing ads placed by the Southwest Land Company for a new 160-acre tract southwest of the Vernon and Vermont Avenue intersection, “right in the path of advancing growth and prosperity.” The ads highlight “Large lots and a beautiful park in the center of the tract,” which the developers donated to Los Angeles to be used as a city park. Perhaps “The largest and choicest subdivision in the southwest” line was hyperbole, but even 120 years later, Vermont Square remains a peaceful, beautifully laid out neighborhood of charming craftsman bungalows. 

On September 18, 1911, LA’s new City Librarian, Everett Robbins Perry, appeared before the Park Commission to request the southern portion of Vermont Square’s park as the site of a new library. The Commission agreed, and within two months, architects Sumner Hunt & Silas Burns had been chosen to design the building. They hadn’t even submitted any plans for review yet, but when your pedigree includes landmarks like the Bradbury Building, the E.L. Doheny Mansion, Casa de Rosas and the Southwest Museum, it’s understandable that you’d get rubber-stamped. Hunt & Burns would go on to design the Automobile Club of Southern California HQ and the Wilshire Ebell. Suffice it to say, they were a fine choice.

By the mid-1920s, LA’s Library Board had settled on three general shapes for new branch libraries: rectangular, outer L shape or inner L shape. Back in 1911, there was no such mandate from the city, though Carnegie’s secretary James Bertram did exert some control over specific design ideas. Per the Los Angeles Times on November 22, 1911, the Library Board proposed “that the building in each neighborhood shall conform to the architectural note of that vicinity.” How a tall, brick rectangle in the Italian Renaissance mode “conforms” with a neighborhood of low-slung craftsman homes sided in wood or stucco, I couldn’t tell you. But the Library Board okayed Hunt & Burns’s plans in January of 1912, and Carnegie’s team followed suit two months later. 

The only holdup had to do with the funding of the Vermont Square Branch. One of the few stipulations that Carnegie put on his library grants was that the local government had to set aside money for future library maintenance, equivalent to 10% of the total building costs – which amounted to $35,000, in this case. Should that money come from a property tax levy that the city had put in place for library purposes? Or should the city foot the $3500 maintenance money from its general fund, independent of that levy? After what the Morning Tribune called “a lively debate,” including some pleading from City Librarian Perry, the city council’s finance committee chose on April 15, 1912 to go the general fund route. This financial model was another pioneering moment in LA’s branch library system – it set a precedent followed by other branches, including the Arroyo Seco Branch (now demolished and replaced), the second of the Carnegie libraries to be built in LA. 

Construction began in late June, and by the middle of February of 1913, the Times reported that the library was ready for dedication. Nine days before opening, the library placed a classified ad in search of a janitor.

All in all, the Vermont Square Branch cost $38,446 for the building, equipment and landscaping – not far off from the $35,000 they received from the Carnegie fund. Architects Hunt & Burns gave the city a refined, supposedly fireproof library worthy of its focal point at the base of Vermont Square Park. From the outside it’s a simple rectangle, topped by a roof of red tile that overhangs the southern part of the building like a wide-brimmed hat. The bottom half of each wall is faced with cream-colored brick, and the top half alternates between bands of vertical windows and a richly-detailed, terracotta frieze, also a creamy off-white.

Like many Carnegie libraries, the Vermont Square Branch sets its main entrance at the top of a staircase, which some interpret as symbolic of an ascent to enlightenment. Around the front door is a baroque terra cotta frame, flanked by two wide flower pots. Walk inside, and the staircase continues up to the main floor, where you’re immediately greeted by the circulation desk.

Inside, you get an immediate sense of the impressive proportions of the library – its main floor is nearly double-height, with those tall clerestory windows bathing the entire library with natural light. Two partitions of oak and glass, each one ending in an octagonal pillar with a marble base, separate the reference desk from the children’s and adult’s reading rooms, to the right and left, respectively. Downstairs there used to be a story hour room, a coal storage room for keeping the furnace stoked, and a public lecture hall equipped for both movies and stereopticon views. There also used to be an outside reading porch connected to the northeast corner of the building; that’s since been enclosed (boooooo). 

The Vermont Square Branch opened to the public on the evening of March 1, 1913 with a simple ceremony. City Librarian Perry gave remarks, as did representatives of the Vermont Square Improvement Association, the Library Board and the Board of Education. A vocal quartet sang some numbers, and guests were serenaded by a student orchestra from the Manual Arts High School, just a few blocks away. One wonders whether there were any book-shaped hors d’oeuvres served at the ceremony. If so, they didn’t make the papers.

Starting with just 2,000 books, an eighth of its max capacity, the Vermont Square Branch quickly grew in popularity. Within a few months the collection had doubled, with 2,013 library cards issued; by 1927 only the Hollywood Branch had a larger circulation. To keep up with the rapid pace of growth, new shelves were added behind the circulation desk in the 1920s, and free-standing shelving was added to the middle of the two reading rooms. They even replaced the bulky coal furnace with a gas furnace, which meant that the coal storage room could be converted into staff space, and the staff space upstairs could be used for library storage. 

This library has also served a vital need as a community hub. The Vermont Square Improvement Association and West Ebell Club both met regularly in the downstairs rooms. Piano recitals were common in the auditorium for the first 20 years, as were meetings of the Women’s Council of Community Service, the Southwest Realty Board, groups of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Teacher’s Club of Trades and Industries and many more. 

Over the decades, the library responded to changing needs of the locals and the country. During WWI, Vermont Square Branch hosted meetings of the Women’s Council for Defense and multiple Red Cross auxiliaries, and even hosted a send-off reception for local draftees heading off to war. Opening hours shrank during WWII, and the checkout policy became more generous, to accommodate patrons who couldn’t come as often due to wartime gasoline rationing; the library was also on call as an air raid shelter and a Red Cross Casualty Center, just in case. 

From 1949 through 1978 the Vermont Square Branch was designated the regional branch of the Central Region. When the Exposition Park building was completed to take over that position in 1978, the Library Board considered replacing the Carnegie building with a more modern facility. The Whittier Narrows earthquake of 1987 made the situation even more uncertain (this wasn’t the first time Vermont Square went through an earthquake – its chimney and part of the cornice came down during the Long Beach earthquake of 1933). Beginning May 26, 1990, the branch closed for mandatory earthquake retrofitting, and for the next six years patrons checked out books from a mall at 5401 South Figueroa Street.

Thankfully the Carnegie building was successfully reinforced, and even got some upgrades during the break in the 1990s. The auditorium became a more flexible multipurpose room, they added a climate control system, and brought in a suite of computer workstations, courtesy of Wells Fargo Bank. The branch reopened on May 11, 1996 and it’s been going strong ever since. 

In 2021, Vermont Square Branch was dedicated to the memory of Rita Walters, the first Black woman to be elected to Los Angeles City Council, and a member of the LA Public Library Board of Commissioners for 15 years.

When I visited on a Saturday afternoon in the spring of 2025, I witnessed a library that was fully invested in its role as a “third space” for a diverse community. They had a large section of Spanish-language books, reflective of the largely Latino makeup of the Vermont Square neighborhood today. There were displays up for LGBTQ+ books and books for neurodivergent people. There was a shelf near the entrance with seed packets and COVID tests to take home. Students were working on computers, or just reading at desks. It felt like a modern library should, which is saying something for a building that’s been there for well over a century.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ “A Brief Vermont Square Branch Library History” (LAPL.org)

+ “Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World – Philanthropy 101” (PBS.org)

+ “Andrew Carnegie: The Richest Man in the World – The Strike at Homestead Mill” (PBS.org)

+ “Architects Selected for Branch Library” (Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1911 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Better Hurry for Bargains” (Los Angeles Herald, April 29, 1906 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Branch Library Completed” (Los Angeles Evening Express, March 1, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Carnegie, Andrew: “Wealth” (North American Review, June, 1889 – via HathiTrust.org)

+ Carnegie, Andrew: “The Best Fields for Philanthropy” (North American Review, December, 1889 – via HathiTrust.org)

+ “Carnegie Libraries: The Future Made Bright (Teaching with Historic Places)” (NPS.gov, compiled from James H. Vandermeer, “Carnegie Libraries of Washington Thematic Resource,” 1982)

+ “Carnegie to O.K. Plans of Branch Library Building” (December 20, 1911 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Council Is Held by Library Precedent” (Los Angeles Municipal News, April 2, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “First Branch Library to Be Built at Once” (Morning Tribune, March 6, 1912 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “First Local Carnegie Library Completed” (Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “History of the Vermont Square Branch Library, 1913 – 1936” (PDF – LA Public Library, 1959)

+ Hyers, Faith Holmes, compiler: Hand Book of the Branch Libraries (PDF – Los Angeles Public Library, 1928)

+ “LA Public Library Rita Walter Dedication 12/10/21” (Video – @LACityview35 on YouTube, December 14, 2021)

+ “Latest, Biggest and Best” (Ad – Los Angeles Herald, December 14, 1905 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Library Board Approves Plans for Carnegie Branch System” (Morning Tribune, January 4, 1912 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Library Circulation Shows 32 Pct. Gain Appropriation O.K.’d” (Morning Tribune, April 16, 1912)

+ “Library Dedication” (Los Angeles Times, February 23, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Library Report Sent Back to Committee” (Los Angeles Evening Express, April 2, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Los Angeles Public Library Dedicates Vermont Square Branch To Rita Walters” (LASentinel.net, December 11, 2021)

+ Multiple Property Submission to the NRHP for LA Public Library Branches, 1913-1930 (NPS.gov)

+ “New Subdivision Plat Accepted” (Los Angeles Evening Express, November 25, 1905 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Plan Dedication of First Branch Library” (Los Angeles Municipal News, February 26, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Sanford, Tiffney: “The Library and the Department Store: Hamburger Building (1908-1914)” (LAPL.org, December 14, 2022)

+ Spitzzeri, Paul R.: “Through the Viewfinder with One for the Books: A Snapshot of the Vermont Square Branch Library, Los Angeles, 1919” (The Homestead Blog, January 19, 2023)

+ “Vermont Avenue Square” (Ad – Los Angeles Evening Express, January 18, 1906 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Vermont Avenue Square” (Ad – Los Angeles Evening Express, March 14, 1906 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Vermont Avenue Square” (Ad – Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1905 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Vermont Square Branch Library” (LAPL.org)

+ Vermont Square Branch Library’s NRHP nomination form (NPS.gov)

+ “Vermont Square Library Site” (Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1911 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Wanted–Janitor for New Vermont” (Ad – Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Wants Library Fund to Support Branches” (Los Angeles Municipal News, March 19, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)

+ “Will Support Library” (Los Angeles Municipal News, March 5, 1913 – via Newspapers.com)