Peter Warfield: Library Changes Not for Better
All the king's horses and all the king's men, won't be able to put the Park Branch Library together again after it is altered for a generation by a badly-designed renovation that SF Mayor Gavin Newsom appears to want without delay, and is working to accomplish through his appointees to the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC), the SF Library Commission, headed by Jewelle Gomez, and city Librarian Luis Herrera.

The renovation is scheduled to begin immediately after the library's 100th birthday party Oct. 29 - Park is the library system's oldest building - and features a closed staff workroom that spoils the beautiful existing, uninterrupted open space that one architect called "a kind of people's temple of learning." Its walls will be about nine to 11 feet tall. (We don't know the exact height because the library refused to let us see a copy of the plans, an action that the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in August determined by an 8 - 0 vote was a violation of open government laws.)

Children's and adult reference desks placed back-to-back will cut privacy and ease future staff reductions. Additionally, and almost never discussed publicly, there will be inappropriate placement of donor names everywhere, in a library that never had a single donor name. In fact, the City rejected funding from Andrew Carnegie because of its opposition to "tainted money."

An unnecessary closure for at least a year is planned. All structural work for earthquake safety and ADA access was completed under a prior bond measure in the early '90s. The library's FAQ sheet says closure is necessary because the renovation work "can only be done efficiently if the contractor has access to the entire facility at the same time."

But what about the use of a library by the neighborhood - is that worth so little in the calculations of the library?

The HPC is scheduled to determine whether or not to designate Park Branch as a landmark at its Oct. 7 meeting. Many individuals and groups have endorsed landmarking, including S.F. Preservation Consortium and S.F. Architectural Heritage, which called Park a "highly significant library branch" which "has suffered poorly-executed physical improvements."

A Planning Department report says the branch "appears to meet the eligibility requirements for listing on both the National Register and the California Register of Historical Places."

Peter Warfield is the executive director of the Library Users Association.