La Pintoresca Library

We're visiting Pasadena libraries for Banned Books Week. Pasadena has too many libraries to visit them all in one week (and we're all snooty-proud of that fact), but we'll do what we can.

This is the lovely La Pintoresca branch library at the corner of Washington and Fair Oaks. It's one of the busiest of our branch libraries.

Last night I went to a lecture at Caltech, given by professor John Sutherland of Caltech and University College London, about Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"--which, perhaps not coincidentally, is on the list of banned or challenged classics we discussed the other day. That's a long way 'round to telling you the lecture was sponsored by the Friends of the Caltech Libraries. Did you know Caltech has six libraries? (Speaking of snooty-proud.)

Pasadena has 10 libraries (the Central Library and its nine branches). I'm puffing my chest out even further over six more at Caltech.

Now that I think of it, Pasadena City College has a beautiful library. And of course there's the Altadena Library. I wonder if there's a library at the Art Center College of Design? JPL might have one, too. Do the schools still have libraries? If they do, I'll be tripping over myself.


Update from Thal Armathura (what would we do without you, Thal?):
This is from Flowers of Marengo by Maggie Valentine, a fascinating article about northwest Pasadena and its many treasures:
The site of La Pintoresca (Painter) Hotel, the land was acquired by the City when the hotel burned down. Landscape architects Theodore Payne and Ralph Cornell laid out the park in 1925. Many of the trees and plantings date from the 1880's, when they were part of the grounds of the hotel. The spanish Revival library, designed by Cyril Benett and Fitch Haskell in 1930, complements the 1925 Electric Substation, also by Bennett and Haskell, at the northeast corner of the park. Clerestory windows in the central tower illuminate the reading room and circulation desk in the center of the building, which is laid out in a Greek cross plan. The library and park are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.