PCAD - City of Los Angeles, Public Library (LAPL), Irving, Washington, Branch #1, Los Angeles, CA

AKA: Los Angeles Public Library, Washington Irving Branch #1, Los Angeles, CA

Exterior view of the Washington Irving Branch Library #1, Los Angeles, 2008; from Wikimedia Commons, photo by Los Angeles

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1803 South Arlington Avenue
Mid-City, Los Angeles, CA 90019

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Arlington Avenue and West Eighteenth Street

The Washington Irving Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library opened on 12/13/1926 with a collection of 5,000 books. The building was a gabled rectangle, with an apsidal projection on one end. Its exterior was composed of upper layers of buff art brick and cement plaster, resting on lower courses of brick. This alternating layering of brick and plaster created an unusual and highly decorative effect, deriving from Italian Romanesque architecture. (Allison and Allison designed many of the buildings on the early UCLA Campus at about this time, some of which demonstrated this banded effect. A replacement Irving Branch paid homage to the first by retaining some of this banding.) The building was the second branch to be financed by a $1 million 1925 library bond issue.

PCAD id: 2670

Publications

"Library Expanse Shows City Cultural Growth", Los Angeles Times, E1, 11/7/1926.

City of Los Angeles, Public Library (LAPL), Irving, Washington, Branch #1, Los Angeles, CA (1926)

Publications