Etan Does LA is celebrating National Library Week by visiting LA’s historic libraries listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

This community library served Cypress Park for 80 years. Its architecture alludes to the life of its namesake, author, attorney and politician Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

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

Back in 1987 the National Register of Historic Places inducted a set of 21 buildings, built between 1913-1930, that housed the Los Angeles Public Library’s first wave of branch libraries. Nearly all of the buildings are still around, though some are either vacant or no longer used as libraries. So it goes with the Richard Henry Dana Branch, which for about 80 years kept residents of Cypress Park supplied with reading material. We’ll get to the history of this charming clapboard building in a bit. But first, a very short primer on LA’s branch library system.

The branch library system was developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a way to get books to Angelenos who couldn’t very easily travel to the central library downtown. Beginning in 1891, under the direction of the LAPL’s rockstar head librarian Tessa Kelso, the LAPL began housing semi-permanent collections at public elementary schools around the city for local distribution. By the turn of the century that had expanded into additional “deposit stations” at various businesses; the early deposit stations included a social service agency, an industrial school and even a Boyle Heights drugstore. The success of the deposit stations evolved into permanent branches, staffed by trained librarians, and eventually to the construction of branch buildings. 

So let’s talk about one of them! The Richard Henry Dana Branch had its roots in two elementary schools and a barn. Before 1920, Cypress Parkers could get their reading from the teachers at Loreto Street School or Aragon Ave. School, or even check out the latest books from the car barn at the local Los Angeles Railway station. The neighborhood’s first official branch building opened in 1920, called the Dayton Branch. While the historical accounts of the Dayton Branch cheerily welcome “a new pamphlet case, a new Underwood typewriter, curtains and light shades which made the place as pleasant as possible,” there were also calls for a new better ventilation, improved lighting and more space for its collection. By 1926 the Cypress Park community had raised enough bond money for the new building, and it opened on May 3, 1927.

The new Richard Henry Dana Branch building at Pepper Ave. and Romulo St. was designed by Harry S. Bent, the architect responsible for the master plan of the LA County Arboretum and the landscape plan for the Hancock Park neighborhood. Bent had fun with the Dana Branch, designing a building that evoked the history of its namesake. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. is best known for his memoir Two Years Before the Mast, an account of his time as a sailor on the merchant ship Pilgrim, traveling from his hometown of Boston to Alta California in the 1830s. The simple clapboard siding and decorative columns at the entrance are typical of 19th-century New England architecture, the kind Dana would have encountered during his upbringing; the tiny circular windows look like the portholes of a ship. Cool, huh? The Dana Branch building is apparently the largest wooden building among the original branches, and the only wooden one that’s still around.

Cypress Park got a new, larger library building in 2008, and the Dana Branch stood vacant for a number of years. This 2008 photo on Wikipedia shows a discolored facade with graffiti on the porthole windows. In 2015 the building was cleaned up and reopened as a community center called the Cypress Park Club House, operated by the City of LA Department of Recreation & Parks. It’s still got that charming metal book drop slot in the front door, a perpetual reminder of its origins.

Recommended Reading

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

+History of Richard Henry Dana Branch of Los Angeles Public Library, 1912-1936

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

+Richard Henry Dana, Jr. biography (National Park Service)