Atlanta Central Library
The Atlanta Central Library is the main branch of the Fulton County Library System in Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The eight-story building, completed in 1980 and designed by Marcel Breuer in the Brutalist style, occupies an entire city block and was Breuer's final completed work. It replaced the Carnegie Library, built for the Atlanta Public Library, the FCLS's predecessor. The Central Library houses the FCLS's special collections and hundreds of thousands of volumes.
The original Carnegie Library opened in 1902 and was proposed for replacement by the 1960s. Breuer was hired to devise plans for the new branch, which were published in 1971. A bond issue to fund the construction of the branch was not approved until 1976; the Carnegie Library was demolished to make way for the Central Library, which was dedicated on May 25, 1980. Following several minor upgrades over the years, including a plaza renovation in the 1990s, the building was partially renovated in 2002. After unsuccessful demolition attempts in the late 2000s and the 2010s, a complete renovation took place from 2018 to 2021.
The building has a concrete facade with an inverted massing and some windows. The interior was designed with a basement theater and restaurant; several stories of stacks and reading rooms; and administrative offices on the upper floors. Over the years, the Central Library received extensive architectural commentary; although architects praised the design, the general public was more critical.
History
The original central building of the Fulton County Library System was the Carnegie Library, funded with money from industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Designed by Ackerman & Ross in the Beaux-Arts style, the building opened on March 4, 1902. The Central Library was housed in the Carnegie Library building for most of the century. To address overcrowding, an annex was completed in November 1935, and another expansion took place in 1950. After the second expansion, the Carnegie Library covered. By the 1960s and 1970s, there were myriad issues with the old building, including outdated wiring, leaking roofs, and cracking plasterwork. In addition, there was a shortage of usable books, the old library stacks were crumbling, and the building was too small to accommodate its traffic.Development
Need for a new building
A 1965 study by the library expert Joseph L. Wheeler had prompted library officials to consider a new central branch building. Shortly after Carlton Rochell became the APL system's director in 1968, he proposed that the Carnegie Library be replaced with a larger facility, which he suggested would help the APL attract readers. The new branch was to be more than twice as large as the original facility, with space for 1 million volumes in open stacks and 500,000 volumes in closed stacks. Two studies had found that it was infeasible to refurbish the Carnegie Library, and preserving the existing facade in front of a new building would have required unwieldy structural changes. That August, the APL board passed a resolution to request $5.5 million in bonds, which was later increased to $6 million. The new branch was tentatively planned to occupy the entire city block between Carnegie Way and Fairlie, Williams, and Forsyth streets, including the Carnegie Library site. There were brief discussions about constructing the central branch elsewhere by 1969, but by the next year, the Carnegie site was again being proposed for the new central branch's location.After Rochell interviewed several architects, the APL hired Marcel Breuer and Associates to draw up preliminary plans in May 1970; the firm received a full design contract that November. Rochell had been impressed by Breuer's design of the Whitney Museum's Madison Avenue building in New York City, and he wanted the new library building to be a cultural hub. In March 1971, Breuer revealed his designs for a concrete structure with cantilevered setbacks and intermittent large windows. Breuer and his team flew from New York City to present the plans, bringing along a wooden model in a baggage compartment. The preliminary plans also included a restaurant, an exhibition hall, meeting rooms, and a drive-through window for patrons. The APL had acquired all the land by that August, when the board of trustees, at the recommendation of Mayor Sam Massell, allocated funds to study the feasibility of constructing the new central branch under Five Points. Breuer's firm studied this proposal as well, which was presented to city officials that December, but the Five Points plan was ultimately rejected.
Funding, relocation, and demolition disputes
Construction stalled in 1972 and was delayed for several years due to disputes over the building's funding source. In particular, politicians did not want to host a bond-issue referendum, which required raising taxes by the same amount as the bond issue. Massell had unsuccessfully attempted to get the Georgia government to pay for the new building, and the original cost estimate had increased by $3 million by mid-1973. The funding source was a major point of contention in the 1973 Atlanta mayoral election, where only two candidates supported the bond issue referendum, even as most of the candidates endorsed the new building. Maynard Jackson, who won the election, pledged to instead secure funding through private means but was unable to find a private financier. Although the library's trustees wished to remain at Carnegie Way, there were proposals to move the building elsewhere.Costs had increased to over $20 million by the mid-1970s, and the referendum had been rejected four times by 1975. APL trustees approved a resolution that March, requesting $1.2 million of city tax revenue for the new building, and the Friends of the Atlanta Public Library was established to advocate for the building. In October 1975, the Atlanta City Council agreed to include $18.9 million for the building in an upcoming referendum involving three other projects. Although the projects were listed separately on the ballot, the new building's supporters promoted all four projects jointly to avoid drawing undue attention to the library bonds. The library funds were narrowly approved that December, largely among racial lines: Black voters had supported the measure, while white voters had opposed all four projects. The bond issue, which was delayed until August 1976, made the city the primary financier of the new building.
Work was delayed for several months while construction documents were prepared, and Breuer's firm redid the interior designs to accommodate additional uses. Both the library board and the City Council recommended that the new library be built on the Carnegie Library's site. In June 1976, Breuer's firm completed their revised plans, and the library board voted to temporarily relocate the Central Branch to 10 Pryor Street Southwest, where it was to occupy four floors. The engineering firm Stevens & Wilkinson created detailed drawings for the new building. Rochell resigned from the APL before work began, and his successor Ella Gaines Yates oversaw the building's continued development. The City Council approved the Central Branch's temporary relocation in October 1976, after alternate sites were rejected; the Carnegie Library closed in February 1977, and its functions were moved to Pryor Street. Two City Council members proposed renaming the new library after the activist W. E. B. Du Bois in May 1977, but the council rejected the proposal.
Construction
Work began in October 1977, with the project planned to take three years. The George Hyman Construction Co. and the Ozanne Construction Co, were hired as the general contractors. Despite an effort to save the Carnegie Library, that building was torn down to make way for Breuer's structure. Parts of the facade were salvaged, and the temporary Central Branch on Pryor Street used furniture from the old building; the time capsule from the original library was unsealed that December. With the Central Library's construction, the city government became more involved in the APL's operation, despite the trustees' objections. In early 1978, the APL board threatened to withdraw its involvement in the project following a dispute with the city government; the board had wanted to hire Breuer's firm to oversee construction, but the city disagreed.Despite the dispute between the library board and the city, construction proceeded ahead of schedule, and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum and Jenkins-Fleming were hired as the interior design consultants. The library board had hired the two firms in exchange for getting the city government's approval to select a construction manager and add two more floors. The two additional floors were intended to accommodate the branch's future needs, as it would have been disruptive to construct the two floors after the building's completion. Yates, who oversaw even the most minute aspects of the building's construction, said that "this building is virtually hand-crafted in every respect", while an architect with Stevens and Wilkinson said that workers had "taken enormous pride" in the project. By early 1979, the facade was nearly completed, though the interior design consultants had not started work. Elected officials including Mayor Jackson toured the under-construction library that May.
The new Central Library included an electronic card catalog system to replace the old building's physical cards, as well as a minicomputer system for readers and another system to detect whether patrons had overdue books. These upgrades were funded by the 1975 bond issue. The bond issue also allocated $100,000 for artwork, and Breuer's partner Hamilton Smith had suggested that these funds, along with additional money raised by the APL, be used for a sculpture. Smith and Breuer had originally planned to commission Breuer's friend Alexander Calder, who had died before construction started. In September 1979, the library board's chairman suggested that the new building could open in phases; while several floors were ahead of schedule, other parts of the interior had been delayed. The temporary Central Library closed at the beginning of March 1980, though the Breuer building's opening was rescheduled multiple times. The building's contractors also threatened to sue the city government over the delays.