October 1993 - Los Angeles Central Library Re-Opens
On October 2, 1993, the Los Angeles Central Library re-opened to the public after seven years of fire damage repair and the construction of a modern expansion wing.
An arson fire at the historic 1926 Bertram Goodhue-designed building on April 29, 1986 destroyed some 400,000 volumes, or 20 percent of the library's collection. A second arson fire on September 3 later that year did further damage to the music department. The surviving collection was moved into a leased building on Main Street. In the late 1980s, the air rights above the six-story library building were sold to developers to build the 1,017-foot, 73-story Library Tower (now U.S. Bank Building) across 5th Street. The money raised from the sale of air rights, as well as corporate and individual donations, went toward the repair and expansion of the Central Library.
The 1993 re-opening of the Central Library attracted 80,000 Angelenos who were there to not only visit the restored landmark building for the first time in seven years, but to see the new eight-story Tom Bradley Wing (featuring a state-of-the-art computerized book cataloguing system), and the spacious Maguire Gardens, a verdant public space on the west lawn of the library, featuring pools, fountains, and benches for leisurely reading. The newly-expanded library boasts 538,000 square feet of space, and some 2.6 million books in 89 miles of shelves, making it the third-largest public library building in the United States.
KCET was one of the participating partners at the Central Library re-opening, with Huell Howser on hand to tape a special "Visiting..." episode on the newly-reopened library, as well as a "Storytime" live reading event for kids, and Didi Conn from PBS' "Shining Time Station" making an appearance to read to youngsters.
In 2001, the L.A. Central Library was renamed, "The Richard J. Riordan Central Library," after the Los Angeles mayor who served from 1993 to 2001 and championed libraries, reading, and literacy during his administration.
