History
The San Diego Public Library was established on May 19, 1882, by an elected board of library trustees, one of whom was civic leader and philanthropist George Marston. The first location was rented space in the Commercial Bank building at Fifth and G streets, and the new library opened its doors to the public for the first time on July 15, 1882. San Diego was the first city west of the Mississippi River to receive a Carnegie Library grant. The grant was received in 1899 and the library built in 1902. The library moved to Eighth and E streets where the new Carnegie Library was constructed.
A notable librarian during this period was Clara Estelle Breed (1906-1994), who served as children's librarian at the downtown branch and was appointed City Librarian in 1945, a post she held for 25 years. She founded numerous branch libraries and established the Serra Cooperative Library System, which allows users to borrow books from other libraries in San Diego and Imperial counties. She maintained contact with many Japanese American children when they were interned with their families during World War II; her correspondence with those children is now on display at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
In 1952, the Carnegie Library was demolished and a new Central Library was opened at the same location on June 27, 1954. Over the years, many branch libraries have also been opened throughout the City.
In 2010, construction began on a new $185 million Central Library in downtown San Diego, designed by architect Rob Quigley and topped with an iconic steel-and-mesh dome. It is scheduled to open in summer 2013. It will include a new charter high school, e3 Civic High, which is billed as the only school in the United States to be housed within a library. The school will be on the sixth and seventh floors of the library and will be visible to, but not accessible by, the public. The school will serve grades 9 through 12 with an eventual student body of 500.
Read more about this topic: San Diego Public Library
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)