Welcome to The Last Bookstore (and more) in Los Angeles!

My friend and I planned an outing to downtown Los Angeles yesterday.  Our main goal was to visit "The Last Bookstore" on the corner of 5th and Spring Streets.  What a find!

We decided to take the train to avoid all the traffic and parking challenges.  And it was so much fun to arrive at Historic Union Station.  It feels like you've just stepped out of a time machine.

The Last Bookstore was a pretty long walk from the train station, so we hopped on the Metro and got off at Pershing Square.  We quickly found the bookshop,  just a couple of blocks away, and squealed with delight at the first thing we saw upon entering:  a checkout counter constructed of old books!

The cavernous inside of building, which originally housed a bank, is quite grand - complete with columns and gorgeous painted high ceilings. We explored the main floor a little bit on our way to the back staircase. I'd read that the upper mezzanine level is literally a labyrinth of used books, with many priced at just $1.00!   This is what greeted us going up the stairway...

There were crazy paper sculptures and artwork everywhere, but the best part of the whole place was a tunnel made of books, leading to the rooms with all the $1.00 books!  We found thousands of books, organized loosely into sections - but not alphabetically by author - so be ready for a search. In some areas we had to navigate around boxes of books (the owner buys books from local non-profit organizations who've had them donated). 

Meandering our way past the shelves and shelves of books, we found a fun area full of hardbacks organized by color. I bought several children's books, including  Dogger, by Shirley Hughes, as well as a book - Film Music, A Neglected Art: "The History and techniques of a new art form, from silent films to the present day" - for my son who has a degree in film animation.  He's going to love it!

My treasure find was a hardback copy of Caldecott & Co. (1988), by Maurice Sendak.  I got if for just $6.00 in the lower level of the store. The book is an anthology of Sendak's essays on writing and illustrating for children. The ''Caldecott'' of the title is the Victorian illustrator Randolph Caldecott, one of Sendak's great heroes.  He also highlights Beatrix Potter, Walt Disney, Maxfield Parrish, George MacDonald, Jean de Brunhoff, and Mother Goose (to name a few).

Our next stop was Grand Central Market for a quick lunch.  Right around the corner was a building I'd been wanting to see ever since watching the movie "The Artist".  I loved the stairway scene, and I was so pleased to discover that it was shot on location in a building in Los Angeles: The Bradbury Building.  It was pretty plain looking on the outside, but walking in the door, I gasped and smiled at the same time as the lobby opened up before me into a space that I wished I could enter everyday!

Why can't we design places like this anymore???  Think how happy people would be to walk into a workplace such as this every morning, as opposed to the stale, municipal structures of today!  Seeing old buildings makes me SO nostalgic for the past (more on that in my next post).

My friend had never been to the Los Angeles Public Library, so we walked there next.  If you saw my blog post from two years ago, you'll remember that I had a fun jaunt there with my daughter and her friend (who happens to be the daughter of my fellow sight-seer on this trip!)

The outside of the Los Angeles Public Library is surrounded
by an iron gate full of book quotes.

This is the breathtaking ceiling in the rotunda where the children's library is located.

We had one more interesting historic place to see before heading home.  More about that in my next post...

A DAY AT THE LOS ANGELES CENTRAL LIBRARY

I sometimes get frustrated that I live so close to Los Angeles, but rarely go there. Yesterday, my daughter and I, along with our good friend, Monika, decided to brave the traffic (the main reason I don't go) and visit the Central Public Library.

We were not disappointed - it's a true landmark...

Note about parking: it's expensive, so make sure you go to their website for details of where to park and how to get a validation discount.  (Read this carefully - you have to apply for a library card - if you don't already have one - in order to get validation.  It's free to residents of LA, Orange, and Ventura Counties, but be prepared to wait in line.)

Finally out of the parking structure, we approached the steps, fountains, and entryway in the McGuire Garden...
These elements comprise Jud Fine’s major art program, “Spine”, and feature inscriptions and sculptures symbolizing an open book. Flanking this Flower Street entrance to the gardens are two pieces not unlike the frontispiece or end sheets of a book. Looking ahead is a series of stairs past raised pools titled “Bright,” “Lucid,” and “Clear.”

Risers on the steps on either side of the fountains encompass a slightly patina brass finish with letters from 19 languages etched in green; black copper plate with printed words in nine languages cut into the surface in white; and symbolic communications in higher math, art and poetry established during the electron age, etched on stainless steel plate in black.

Source: To learn more, look HERE and also check out the library website's page, "Art & Architecture in Central Library".

Entrance off Flower Street, "WISDOM OF THE EAST AND WEST"

Once inside the library, we went to the Tom Bradley Wing...it was built after two arson fires in 1986 damaged the building and destroyed 20% of the Library’s books. Many of the surviving books suffered smoke and water damage. 


Mayor Tom Bradley and Lodwrick Cook, then CEO of the oil company ARCO, co-chaired the $10 million fund-raising drive to repair and replace the books that were damaged or destroyed. Their “Save the Books” campaign is commemorated with the renaming of the main rotunda for Cook, and the modern wing for Mayor Bradley.

The escalators and walkways at each level provide different perspectives on the atrium, and on three chandeliers decorated with a rather enigmatic collection of objects and figures.                                                                   

Each chandelier contains a ton of aluminum and fiberglass. They’re the work of Therman Statom, an artist primarily known for his work with sheet glass.

On each of the three landings on the atrium’s lower floors is an Illumination, a “functional sculpture” by Anne Preston. These four-meter-high lanterns refer to “light, understanding, and books.” They’re circular arrays of aluminum vanes, the top of which is shaped like an upside-down human profile.

We moved on to the Rotunda, which houses the Children's Literature Department. As we entered, we were surrounded with beautiful murals by Dean Cornwell...depicting four great eras of California history, including discovery, mission building, Americanization and the founding of Los Angeles. They were completed in 1932.

"Americanization"

THE CHILDREN'S LITERATURE DEPARTMENT, "A Library within a Library"!

The first thing we noticed was a feeling of calm, as our eyes were met with inviting wooden tables and chairs, low lighting, and green carpet - patterned in a nature motif, with images like this cute bushy-tailed squirrel.

My favorite area was, of course, the picture book room, at the far end of the department!

So. Many. Lovely. Books.

Several of the tables had baskets full of board books for toddlers.

On the library website, I had noted there would be an International Language Picture Book Collection - "A historic collection of over 5,000 titles from more than 50 countries. We had fun digging up all the HARRY POTTER books we could find in different languages...

Korean

Russian

Vietnamese

French (had my favorite illustrations)

German (gotta love the glasses!)

To us it seemed like this book opened backwards,
but not when you read the pages right to left!

Japanese

Time to leave the library...

and go find lunch --

       at Philppe's on Alameda Street (it's been there since 1908!) Established by Philippe Mathieu, who claimed the distinction of having created the "French Dipped Sandwich."

Placing our order at the counter.

These are the prices, folks!

Yes, a cup of coffee is 9 cents. (The price 
remained a nickel until 1977.)

French onion soup. (We also got a home-made doughnut - for 70 cents -
to go with the 9 cent cup of coffee my daughter ordered.)

Bye, bye! (Seems kind of weird that young adults my daughter's age consider telephone booths with pay phones to be vintage. I must be getting old!)