Leaders of a far Southwest D.C. community have asked a city planning board to reject a proposed branch library design they say is bizarre and utterly out of touch with their neighborhood.
The D.C. Public Library requires two zoning exemptions from the Board of Zoning Adjustments to build the new Washington Highlands Neighborhood Library at 115 Atlantic St. SW, a block off South Capitol Street. The BZA hearing Tuesday provided a handful of neighborhood leaders the chance to deride the library’s ultramodern look — a design from renowned British architect David Adjaye.
“It’s not designed for us, and it’s not designed for the culture of the neighborhood,” Theresa Jones, a Washington Highlands advisory neighborhood commissioner, told The Examiner on Wednesday. “I want a library like I want oxygen, but I don’t want that.”
The branch is one of a dozen ongoing library projects costing $100 million-plus — Georgetown, Shaw and Anacostia among them. Groundbreaking for the new Tenley-Friendship Library is scheduled for Sept. 23, library officials say. The new Parklands-Turner Community Library in Southeast is expected to open Oct. 5.
Washington Highlands is a tight-knit community of red brick, single-family detached homes, said Jones, who testified before the BZA with several other area commissioners. The library design features a large, completely transparent main structure made of glass attached to three pitched-roof pavilions, each a different color, built on angled columns.
The original Washington Highlands branch, built in 1959, was a modernist, progressive structure for the time, Adjaye told The Examiner. The new building, he said, was inspired by the scale of the neighborhood and will be a “beacon.”
“Modernity need not be a frightening thing,” said Adjaye, who was paid $1.3 million for his work.
Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper said the design mirrors the Washington Highlands “that is coming” with new development on South Capitol.
“We are right in that area of change,” she said.
Community leaders complain — though the library system vehemently disagrees — that the design was forced down their throats as they were left out of the planning process. The BZA will take the matter up again in October.
The library system is slated to open 11 branches in the next two years despite recent budget cuts that might affect staffing and operating hours. The goal, Cooper said, is to “make sure libraries are open as many hours as possible.”
“We’re opening new libraries in the midst of budget cuts,” said Robin Diener, executive director of the D.C. Library Renaissance Project. “They’re guaranteeing we’re not going to be able to staff them.”
