|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
A World Class Library
| Article
# : |
19916 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
2,724 Words |
| Author
: |
Julia Braun Kessler
Julia Braun Kessler is arts editor for LA West magazine in Los
Angeles. Her articles appear in Travel & Leisure and other
national publications. |
The gracious, mansionlike William Andrews Clark Library--with its tile roof gleaming in the sun, its manicured hedges, and its surrounding expanse of deep green lawn--looms proudly, just as it has since 1926. Its Italianate façade of travertine marble and red brick and its row of upper-story porthole windows suggest Christopher Wren's work on Hampton Court Palace.
Yet we are not in London after all, but in Los Angeles, a city where most buildings are considered old after barely twenty years and where bulldozers routinely and ruthlessly raze structures to redevelop urban spaces for each generation. Thus, The Clark, as it is affectionately called, is a thoroughly delightful surprise to come upon, a gem on rundown Cimarron Street, hidden in the heart of one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Back in the twenties, West Adams boulevard, just off Cimarron, was the best address in town, a classy residential street for such Los Angeles magnates as the Dohenys, the Bullocks, and the Kerckoffs. And when William Andrews Clark, Jr., bought their, his residence was as grand as any of those of his affluent neighbors. Architecturally undistinguished, that house was leveled long ago. Instead, it is Clark's majestic library, a building he commissioned from the noted California architect Robert D. Farquhar, that remains. Owned and administered by the University of California, it houses one of the world's most valuable collections of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century works of literature, history, music, and science.
The story of how this library came to be, and what has since been made of it, is little known, even in Los Angeles. Unlike the Huntington Museum and Library, its grander and well-publicized Pasadena neighbor, the Clark has kept well out of the public eye, preferring to be an exclusive resource for those in the know. Yet its idyllic setting is more and more admired; it continues to flourish and has become notable as a center sought out by first-rank scholars who journey to it every year from all over the world.
An inquiry into the library's colorful origins discloses a saga that began with a family of remarkably modest means. The Clarks, who had been Pennsylvania homesteaders in an earlier generation, turned to the fabled West to seek fortune and fame. William Andrews Clark, Sr., father of the library's founder, was tempted, like thousands of others, by legendary tales of opportunities in mining. In 1862, as a young man of twenty-three, he went first to Denver, then to Salt Lake City, to Colorado, and finally to Butte,
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
