While San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission voted to recommend landmark status for the North Beach Branch Library, last week San Francisco’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee voted against recommending the designation.
Tomorrow, it’s up to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors to decide with whom they’ll side. And of course, what will or will not be built in the current library’s place:
∙ Split Decision For North Beach Branch Library Landmarking So Far [SocketSite]
∙ Preservation Commission Recommends New North Beach Landmark [SocketSite]
∙ Library Landmarkings On The Land Use Agenda This Afternoon [SocketSite]
∙ Landmark Designation of 2000 Mason Street (North Beach Branch Library) [sfbos.org]
∙ North Beach Library/Joe DiMaggio Playground Master Plan Report [SocketSite]
A little OT, but I wonder how the new board will look in terms of reasonable development. Obviously, some of the races haven’t been determined yet, but it looks like a handful of new members might not be totally crazy… However, I know next to nothing about Kim and Cohen. So much of SF’s future is contingent on what these two young women decide for their respective districts.
@Denis-
Kim’s platform looks pretty encouraging. It’s not on her site anymore but I remember reading about promoting “Smart high density development.”
C’mon, that building is just plain fugly. How can any serious, reasonable person believe it needs to be “preserved”.
I don’t want to appear to defend this particular building’s designation as a landmark or for preservation, but just to be clear: as I understand it, the standard for historic preservation is not “is the building pretty?”, but “Is the building architecturally significant?”
This building is significantly ugly.
There. Does that meet the requirement?
Folks–I live with my young family just up the street from this potential ‘landmark,’ and we need you to call your supes to get this thing torn down and build a new, truly workable library.
Preserving buildings that don’t work the way they’re supposed to, that get in the way of children’s parks so they can’t work the way they’re supposed to, keeps entire neighborhoods from functioning the way _they’re_ supposed to.
Please put this building out of our misery. Thanks.
“Smart high density development”
Like, say, building a multistory building and putting a public library on the lower two or three floors?
“Like, say, building a multistory building and putting a public library on the lower two or three floors?”
If they built the new library any taller than proposed in the picture above, the NIMBYs would poop themselves. Then someone would magically discover additional “historic” elements of the old library besides the shelves.
Let’s hope the BOS is intelligent enough to realize the existing building is out of date and functionally obsolete, not to mention very architecturally significant..and approve the new building.
The new library is sorely needed for the community.
If anybody misses this after it is torn down they can tune in to The Brady Bunch weeknights on Nick at Nite.
From the images above it appears that the historical problem being solved is that the library doesn’t look enough like it’s from the 80s.
Hope the old one gets torn down. Very underwhelmed by that new sketch though.
“If anybody misses this after it is torn down they can tune in to The Brady Bunch weeknights on Nick at Nite.”
or the show Emergency: http://www.emergencyfans.com/images/page6-screenshots/ss-squadengine.jpg
EH: “From the images above it appears that the historical problem being solved is that the library doesn’t look enough like it’s from the 80s.”
Haha! that’s pretty right on.
I don’t see the real improvement either (aside from square footage, and squareness. From the images it actually seems just like a bigger pile of mediocre. Why does Seattle get an amazing main library (OMA)? Or Phoenix get a good one (Bruder)? Or Utrecht Holland get a great one (Arets)? Or any number of Dutch cities, or Spanish/Danish/Swiss/German/French/Korean/Japanese cities, or friggin Hercules across the Bay for that matter even gets a decent one (Bruder)…and SF gets this??
The soups say, no landmark for you!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=76720
10-1 vote