Architecture
The library is set on a walled block in the West Adams neighborhood near Downtown. A grandly conceived garden pavilion, the two-story building is lavishly detailed inside and out. Designed by Robert Farquahar, one of California’s most eminent romantic architects,its paired cubic reading rooms resemble the Villa Lante, a dual Italian Renaissance composition attributed to Vignola. In keeping with the collection, its brick and stone facades overlay an English baroque mode similar that employed by Wren at Hampton Court. The brickwork is very fine, subtly dappled in five colors and set in lavender-tinted mortar.
The Library occupies the former yard of a large house built in the early 20th Century. Unusual for its time, the property was surrounded by a brick wall. This feature may have been part of the property’s appeal for Clark who, after buying it, bought and removed eleven neighboring houses, extended the wall around the entire block, and engaged landscape architect, Ralph Cornell to develop plans for a public park. That project was never completed. Willed to UCLA in 1934 with the stipulation that no structure ever rise within one hundred feet of the library, the building stood for the next sixty years in an unfinished landscape gradually emptied by the removal of the house and an observatory.
In 1988, the Los Angeles architectural firm of Barton Phelps & Associates (Barton Phelps,FAIA, 1946 - ) was commissioned to prepare a master plan for the site. In response to the restrictions of Clark’s gift, it proposes a major research facility surrounding a below-grade garden at its center. Initial funding from the Getty and Ahmanson Trusts was conveyed to the library by former UCLA Chancellor, Dr. Franklin Murphy.
The first of phase construction accommodates library support facilities in a linear building conceived as a two-story, extendable wall. Its four modules are separated by courtyards to form what has been called a range, an 18th Century term borrowed from Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia. The North Range stretches two hundred and seventy feet along the north side of the block. It houses editorial offices, conference and food service facilities, and guestrooms. It leaves the center of the site open and, in its form and color, it relates more closely to the red brick fence than to the library.
Read more about this topic: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
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