Calexico’s Carnegie Library turns 100
CALEXICO — California State Librarian Greg Lucas is one of several high-profile dignitaries scheduled to speak at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Calexico Carnegie Library on Feb. 19.
The event will also honor the Calexico Woman’s Improvement Club, for its past e orts in helping establish the Carnegie Library shortly after the founding of the city in 1908.
The woman’s club was established the same year as the city and included the wives of prominent businessmen of that era.
Since it was not uncommon for men to come to the Valley without their families, the WIC thought it would be a good idea to provide those individuals with some sort of leisure activity, said Sandra Tauler, Community Services director.
“They were the ones who opened the first reading room in Calexico,” Tauler said.
A year later, in 1909, the club enlarged the reading room into a small circulating library located in an adobe building belonging to the Southern Pacific Co. at the southwest corner of Imperial Avenue and Second Street, according to documents provided by Tauler.
It wasn’t until 1914 that WIC members and their supporters petitioned the Carnegie Foundation for funds to establish a library, which was subsequently built in 1918, dedicated on Feb. 19, 1919, and opened to the public a day later.
Today, the library is part of the city’s public library system, serving as a computer lab known as the Carnegie Technology Center, located at 420 Heber Ave.
It is also one of 2,509 Carnegie libraries that were built worldwide using grants from the Carnegie Foundation between 1883 and 1929 and the only one of its kind remaining in Imperial Valley.
As part of the upcoming Feb. 19 celebration, the adjoining street will be closed and Congressman Juan Vargas, state Sen. Ben Hueso and Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia will give presentations.
A special invitation has also been sent out to former library staff to come and participate.
“There’s a lot to celebrate,” Tauler said.
Joining in the festivities will be longtime Calexico resident Carmen Durazo, who as a youngster spent many hours with her friends at the library. Many of those friends, including some who now live outside the county, will also be on hand for the centennial celebration.
“For a lot of us, our home away from home was the library,” Durazo said. “It was a real gathering place.”
The local Carnegie Library was where Durazo discovered the “Wizard of Oz” series and the “Nancy Drew” mystery series.
She also recalled how after the children’s books were moved to the basement it became something of a rite of passage for youngsters to transition from those books to the more adult fare found on the library’s upper level.
After the opening of the Enrique Camarena Memorial Library in 1987, the Carnegie library fell into neglect and was considered for demolition in 1993, prompting citizens to rally for its preservation.
Durazo was among the library’s supporters, participating in formal preservation efforts until her election to the City Council in 2004. Their efforts eventually paid off, with the completion of the library’s restoration in 2007.
“We have a treasure in our Valley,” Durazo said. “These are our roots and people have to learn the history of the town they live in.”
The two-story 3,500-square-foot Spanish Revival building is currently listed in both the state and national registers of historic places, thanks largely to the efforts of longtime Calexico High School librarian Margarita de Necochea.
Adding to the history and allure of the library building is the fact that it was designed by the renowned Los Angeles-based architectural firm of Allison & Allison, which consisted of siblings Clark and James Edward Allison.
“We were the only one that had a library building designed by Allison & Allison,” said Ruben “Gordy” de Necochea. “They were the best architects in the state of California.”
Margarita De Necochea, who has since passed, at the time had enlisted her sons Ruben, Robert and Fernando to help with the preservation effort, Ruben de Necochea said.
That effort was helped along greatly by the awarding of $1.4 million in local funds and a matching $712,000 grant from the California Cultural and Historical Foundation, de Necochea said.
It was women such as the founding members of the Calexico Woman’s Improvement Club and later his mother who helped enrich the city’s cultural life by advocating for such amenities as the Carnegie Library, de Necochea said.
“But for the women, none of that would’ve happened,” he said.