Pitts: Put downtown library on the block
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008If Robb Pitts has his way, another architecturally noteworthy Atlanta library may soon be endangered. In March, the Fulton County Commission, of which Pitts is a member, voted to place a $150 million bond referendum on the fall ballot, with the proceeds to go toward library system construction and repairs.
That package would include about $40 million to overhaul the central library downtown, but Pitts says he plans to lobby the Atlanta-Fulton Library Board this week to instead consider using those funds on a new building.
“Rather than spend $40 million to renovate an old building, we should build a world-class, signature facility that’s more user-friendly,” ideally across from Centennial Olympic Park, he says.
Opened in 1977, the central library is a largely window-less concrete edifice that’s been compared to a giant cinder block. It also happens to have been designed by Marcel Breuer, a former Bauhaus instructor who ranks among the 20th century’s most influential practitioners of architectural modernism. The library is similar in style to Breuer’s earlier design for New York’s Whitney Museum.
Pitts, who advocates selling the old building, is aware he may be courting a public uproar similar to that which followed the proposed sale of the Buckhead branch library, an eccentric, scale-covered building designed by locals Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam. But he’s willing to give it a shot – in fact, he even wants to consider a new proposal by Streets of Buckhead developer Ben Carter to reconstruct the Buckhead library on another site.
“I don’t see how we can say no to that offer,” says Pitts.
