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

Cahuenga Branch is one of three surviving Carnegie libraries built in LA, and an anchor for the East Hollywood community since 1916.

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

This son of a lifelong Marxist has a tough time admitting that mega-rich capitalists can do some pretty okay things with their money sometimes. Such is the case with Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate whose philanthropy resulted in the construction of over 2500 public libraries around the world – including the first six branches of the Los Angeles Public Library. The Cahuenga Branch library was the last of those original six, and one of just three that still remain. 

Standing proud at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and Madison Ave. since 1916, the Cahuenga Branch was designed by architect C. H. Russell (also known for co-designing the Venice Canals) at a cost of $34,000 in high Italian renaissance style. Its symmetrical brick, concrete and stone facade has the dignified appearance of a centuries-old university building, appropriate for a bastion of learning like this. My friend Elson Trinidad, President of the Friends of Cahuenga Library, explained to me that the building shares two design features common to all Carnegie libraries: stairs leading up to the front entrance, to symbolize the ascension through learning, and prominent lighting fixtures, to symbolize enlightenment. This particular Carnegie adds a fancy stone balustrade and decorative diamond patterns in the brickwork. You need something pretty to look at on the path to wisdom, right? 

At the time the Cahuenga Branch was built, this part of the city (known as Colegrove) had been an official part of Los Angeles for only seven years. Its earliest patrons would have remembered when the neighborhood was awash in citrus and avocado trees. With a new aqueduct pumping water into the city and a booming population in the 1910s, Los Angeles was quickly expanding outwards from downtown, and important institutions were popping up or moving in. Children’s Hospital of LA moved to the area in 1914. UCLA opened a second branch in 1919 around the corner on Vermont, on the site that is now LA Community College. Film companies like Fine Arts Studios and William Fox Studios were established around the same time (later on, Cahuenga Branch would have its own Hollywood moment, playing the part of a small-town police station in Nightmare on Elm Street. More recently it featured into an episode of This Is Us).

The Cahuenga Branch served all of these East Hollywood institutions with an annual circulation of over 160,000 books in its first decade, and regular concerts and lectures drawing in the community. Like many public libraries, Cahuenga pitched in during wartime, lending its auditorium to Red Cross volunteers in WWI, and hosting civil defense drills during WWII. 

East Hollywood’s demographics shifted in the 1960s and 1970s, as new immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America moved in. The Cahuenga Branch adapted by acquiring books in new languages and offering citizenship and ESL classes. When I visited, about a month into the war between Russia and Ukraine, I saw a section of books in Russian sandwiched between the Armenian and Ukrainian sections, all underneath a giant mural of an owl surrounded by flying books.

The library sustained damage in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake and closed in 1990 for expansion and seismic retrofitting. When it finally reopened in 1996, Cahuenga Branch had new collections wings, a parking lot and a back entrance that harmonized nicely with the facade on Santa Monica. AND: computers with internet access, paid for by Bill Gates – the Andrew Carnegie of our time.

Cahuenga prepped for its 2016 centennial with a fresh coat of paint, some dope landscaping and a set of bike racks. Then a few days later, a public celebration with speeches, performances, cake and a lecture on the Carnegie libraries (though I’m sure celebrants could have both, I would go with the Carnegie library lecture if I could only chose one. That’s how much I love the Carnegie libraries as an enterprise).

During my visit, I got the chance to speak with the Cahuenga Branch’s Senior Librarian, Crystal Noe. She spoke about the joys and challenges of running a library that’s both a repository of information and a truly public place, open to anyone who chooses to walk through the door. It’s a tough job to maintain a safe space for all the manifold activities that take place at a public institution like this one. Based on the crowd of patrons I saw there on a Saturday afternoon, the Cahuenga Branch continues to play an important role for a diverse community that relies on it.

Recommended Reading

+Cahuenga Branch’s NRHP nomination form

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

+Friends of Cahuenga Library website

+Hooray for…Colegrove? Remembering Hollywood’s Forgotten Neighbor (KCET, 2013)