Harold Washington Library inspires Kansas City rehab
Historic Chicago library's aesthetics mimicked in new Missouri library

Courtesy Jonathan Kemper Kansas City, Mo., officials hope the city’s Main Public Library will improve the area as the Harold Washington Library did for Chicago.

By Chris Coates
Editor-in-Chief

When city officials in Kansas City, Mo., began designing their new library a few years ago, the motivation came from more than 500 miles away.

Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center, at 400 S. State St., was an example of what a public library can be: a learning center, neighborhood gathering spot and economic vector all under one owl-topped roof.

"[The amount] the Chicago library has achieved in terms of civic renewal, we were inspired by it," said Jonathan Kemper, chairman of the Commerce Bank in Kansas City and a co-chair of the library's campaign leadership committee, which started in the late 1990s.

The new Main Public Library, which opened April 13, is inside a four-story building formerly occupied by a bank. Kemper said the new library looks roughly like Chicago's old public library, now the Chicago Cultural Center, at 78 E. Washington St.

The similarities continue on the library's interior. Outside of the shelves of books, Kansas City's library offers amenities mirroring that of Chicago's: a gallery, a theater, a conference room, a children's library, a young adult's library and, perhaps most like the Harold Washington Library Center, a rooftop terrace. The interiors of both locations bear at least passing resemblance to one another-although Kansas City's also offers a parking garage, something Chicago's does not.

Organizers hope the library will also mirror the effects of the Harold Washington Library Center on its surrounding neighborhood.

Not only does Chicago's main library perform its functional role as a library-it was the country's largest when it opened in 1991-Mary Dempsey, the city's library commissioner, said the Harold Washington Library Center serves as an anchor for Chicago's South Loop.

"I remember this neighborhood before a library was here," she said. "In fact, the particular block that we sit [on] was all kind of burlesque shows and flophouses."

That changed when the library came.

Constructed in the early 1990s, the 10 story-building looks as if it's been part of the South Loop for centuries. Its architecture mimics elements in such landmark buildings as the Rookery Building and the Auditorium Theater. And its massive windows along its Plymouth Court side reflect Chicago's architecture onto itself.

The structure's completion in 1991 coincided with a sudden upsurge in popularity for the neighborhood surrounding the library. Supporters say it made the South Loop livable-and caused a big economic boost for the area.

"I doubt very much you would see the new University Center [of Chicago] dormitory where it is were not for the presence of the library or all the educational institutions," Dempsey said, referring to the 18-story student residence center that will eventually house approximately 2,000 students from Columbia, Roosevelt and DePaul Universities when completed this summer.

Dempsey credits the library with spurring more development in the once dilapidated area.

That's exactly what city officials in Kansas City want, too.

They're not alone-Dempsey said that officials from Memphis, Tenn., and San Diego have come "to see what the library looked like and what it did for the surrounding neighborhood."

Kansas City's Library Executive Director Joseph H. Green said that while the two libraries may not look the same from the outside, they are having the same effects on their respective areas.

"What they're doing to the neighborhoods is very similar in that they're stimulating economic development," he said, noting Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's emphasis on the library as "the heartbeat of a neighborhood."

As for the new library's success, Kemper said the verdict's still out.

"It just opened," Kemper said, who also works about a block and a half from the new library. "I think one of the tests is public reactions, which have been very favorable."

"We can't keep up," Green said. "It's been wonderful."