The resurrection of Los Angeles’ Central Library

The great Los Angeles Central Library fire of April 1986 was the biggest conflagration in the city’s history, and the biggest library fire in the nation. Hundreds of thousands of books were destroyed by a mystery arsonist. The flames burned so preternaturally hot that in places they were colorless. But finally the downtown library made a Hollywood comeback. All of this nudged Susan Orlean to write “The Library Book.”

You were a newcomer to Los Angeles when you heard years later about the big library fire.

I was being given a tour of the downtown branch, which just on its own merit is so beautiful. It was during that visit that I first heard about the fire, and I was absolutely fascinated. So, being compelled by the idea of writing about libraries in general and now suddenly having a story that had at its heart such a mystery, I found myself immediately diving in on all aspects, on the history of libraries, and the history of the L.A. library and the story of fire, on the history of burning books.

You look at a man named Harry Peak, the principal suspect [in the arson].

Harry Peak in many ways is a kind of iconic Los Angeles figure. He was a young man who grew up near Riverside, was the handsomest kid in his class. He was a charmer and he also was a dreamer, somebody who imagined himself very much as somebody who was going to be a big star someday.

One of the words that someone used about him was “fabulist,” that he would make up the most astounding stories — that he had just had cocktails with Cher, that he had a bit part in this soap opera…. But then he started telling stories about the fire at the Central Library.

I honestly wonder whether it ever occurred to him that telling tales about a crime — and this was a significant crime, a fire that destroyed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more — that that wasn’t the best glamorous lie to tell.

And he was interrogated. He was arrested. He was released. This all ended up going nowhere. Harry Peak died and … the Central Library fire remains technically unsolved to this day.

Yes, that’s right — to the great frustration of really everybody involved. A number of firefighters believe that Harry did it and that they never got justice. None of us, no one in the public, has any real sense of closure, of thinking, all right, we now know who did it and maybe even why.

People loved the libraries. And yet, there were questions about tearing down the Central Library building.

And it was not very popular with the people who worked there, let alone the people who used it. In the beginning, the building was admired, and it drew enormous praise, and it was a gorgeous, gorgeous piece of architecture

Over time, with money always

being tight and overuse of the library, it began to deteriorate. Unfortunately its deterioration corresponded also with the deterioration of downtown. There were some people who felt that there was no need for a library downtown at all: Sell the land and just have a branch library.

And against this backdrop came the fire and then the community support for saving it.

The campaign to pass the bond measures … was deeply enmeshed [in] the city’s sense of itself. Had we torn down Central Library in the early ’80s, when it was really on the very brink of happening, I think it would be something we would be talking about still.… I think we would look at it the way New Yorkers look at the destruction of the original Penn Station. I don’t know that we would have ever gotten over it.

For [research] purposes, you burned a book.

I thought I’d go to a bookstore, buy a book, burn it, and I can go get another one immediately — I [wouldn’t be] making a statement. And yet I still found it absolutely distressing…. I ended up burning “Fahrenheit 451.” It was a book that really highlighted the brutality of destroying books, the horror that it evokes in us. And I think that [its author, Ray Bradbury] would have approved.

By the time the Central Library reopened, the nature of public libraries was shifting. Libraries were about to enter the internet age, the homeless age.

We’ve been very lucky in the city because we’ve had people running the library who were really forward-thinking and saw the future of libraries and saw that their goal, their mission would diversify, and it wasn’t only going to be, “Oh, you go there and you get a book.”

At the same time, I think libraries remain physical places, and that there’s something important about it…. It’s a place to go to be around other people and to share space with other people, and a place where no money changes hands. You are joining the community, and I think that’s really important.

Did anything you wrote in this book change your thinking about libraries?

I think it made me love them more, if that was possible!

This is an excerpt of the full interview, available at soundcloud/pattmorrisonasks. Patt

Morrison’s latest book is “Don’t Stop the Presses! Truth, Justice and the American Newspaper.”