Seattle Central Library: Everybody’s talking about it

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This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on May 20, 2004). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Today on my lunch, I noticed that the Seattle PI had a special section on the new Seattle Central Library. I snagged a copy, and spent a very pleasant lunch reading about the new building.

Apparently, the new library has been getting a ton of press as of late. A mention on MetaFilter led me to quite a few different links:

  • The Seattle P-I: Special section on the new library.
  • The Seattle Times: Special section on the new library.
  • Slate: Koolhaas the Librarian – Critic’s won’t keep quiet about the Seattle Public Library. “Rem Koolhaas, the Stones to Frank Gehry’s Beatles, finally surpasses his rival in star-chitecture. The Californian’s MIT Center got mixed reviews recently, but the Dutchman’s new library earns florid, Bilbao-like superlatives, confirming that architecture criticism is still in its Baroque period.”
  • The New Yorker: High-Tech Bibliophilia. “The [building] is the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating.”
  • The New York Times: The Library That Puts on Fishnets and Hits the Disco. “In more than 30 years of writing about architecture, this is the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review. I could go on piling up superlatives like cars in a multiple collision, but take my word: there’s going to be a whole lot of rubbernecking going on.”
  • Pacific Northwest: Meet your New Central Library. “Somehow this glass box conveys not coldness but intimacy. The result is not just a library, but a community hub and global showplace that transcends its own city block between Madison and Spring streets. It reaches out and melds with the downtown towers around it.”

I am so there for the grand opening on Sunday.

iTunes: “Cabaret (from Cabaret)” by Haworth, Jill from the album Broadway: The Great Original Cast Recordings (1966, 4:31).