Apr 7, 2008

Preserving a library gem

Status change would pay Palo Alto not to demolish local treasure

By Will Oremus / Daily News Staff Writer

Elizabeth Gulevich sits in a comfortable chair, thumbing through a Barron's magazine on a typically peaceful Saturday morning at the cozy College Terrace Library.

"I love this library," she says, looking up from her magazine across a modest row of desks and computers to the children's nook on the other side of the room. Turning her gaze upward toward the mission-style building's exposed wooden roof beams, she adds, "It looks like a little home."

Gulevich says her Saturday visit to the library has been a weekly ritual since she moved to the area some three decades ago. That makes her something of a newcomer by the standards of the structure itself, which has stood virtually unaltered since prominent local architect Charles Kaiser Sumner built it in 1936.

Tonight, the Palo Alto City Council is expected to approve a measure to keep the little neighborhood treasure intact for many decades to come.

The resolution would upgrade the library's historical status, setting up a row of hurdles for any attempt to demolish or significantly change it. Most significantly in the short term, it would make the building eligible for the city's Transfer of Development Rights program.

Designed to provide financial incentives for historic preservation, the program would allow the city to sell development credits elsewhere in town in exchange for not further developing the library site.

It's an action the city plans to take later this year when it embarks on seismic and other upgrades to the library. The last similar project, a 2005 renovation of the children's library, brought $238,000 from the development rights sale.

In March, Beth Bunnenberg voted along with the rest of the city's historic resources board to recommend the status upgrade for the library. Her support was based in part on the recommendation of an architectural historian who said Sumner's work wasn't given its proper due when the library was first classified in the city's historic inventory.

"As time has gone on and as we've learned more about preservation and what is important in evaluating buildings, why, we've learned that some of the buildings categorized as (low priority) are really more important than that," Bunnenberg said. "This little gem of a College Terrace Library is one of those."

Steve Staiger, president of the Palo Alto Historical Society, said Sumner was responsible for some of the city's most prominent houses, including several in the Crescent Park area that were part of last year's Holiday House Tour. An oft-told anecdote about the architect is that he changed his name from Charles Sumner Kaiser to Charles Kaiser Sumner to avoid association with the German leader during World War I.

The College Terrace Library, Staiger said, was built under the auspices of Franklin D. Roosevelt's federal Works Progress Administration to provide jobs during the Depression.

Beyond the circumstances of the building's construction, Staiger added, it's significant for the central role it has played over the decades in the College Terrace neighborhood, formerly part of the town of Mayfield.

"The neighborhood loves that building," Staiger said. "In tough times, it doesn't make sense financially for the city to run it as a library because it's so small, so the city says it's going to close it. But the neighbors are very vocal and influential, and they always say no."

The library may in fact have to close for a year or more during the upcoming renovations, city officials say. Once it reopens, however, it will be ready to settle in for the long haul.

The Palo Alto City Council meets at 7 p.m. in City Hall at 250 Hamilton Ave.



E-mail Will Oremus at woremus@dailynewsgroup.com.