A Public Library in a "Pedestrian Mall"

I’ve been suspicious of the new Cameron Village Regional Library, located at the end of Cameron Village Shopping Center, since they started construction. Driving by during assembly I wondered if it would be a positive place when finished worrying that it might resemble a bland corporate headquarters instead of a civic monument. When I left for Europe last summer, the exposed steel frame was too open to know what the enclosed space would be like.

When I returned, I was unsure of the merits of the two-story, green-glass façade and the aluminum shade devices above the second story. The frosted-glass awning over the sidewalk didn’t ease my misgivings. The building had office-park leanings during the day, and Architectural Record-cover aesthetics when lit from the inside at night, but I decided to reserve judgment until I could experience it for myself.

I made the pilgrimage in my car, despite its location only four blocks away, because that’s how most of Raleigh will experience the library for the first time. From the street, it is a long box, with two narrow, brick wings on either side of a projecting glass front, and in the middle, popping up through the roof, is a glass box with a deep eave.

After parking in the lower garage, I wasn’t sure how to get up to the library as no signage existed to direct me. The street sidewalk was visible, but it looked like there might be an entrance at the far end of the garage towards the alleyway. (There wasn’t.) At the surface parking-lot entrance from Clark Avenue’s sidewalk, I was greeted by a sign bolted to a freshly whitewashed brick planter that declared, “SHOPPING CENTER PARKING FOR PATRONS ONLY.” And then in smaller letters, “VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENSE.” This sign made it clear why the library has its own small parking lot separate from Cameron Village. It should read, “LIBRARY PATRONS STAY OUT.” Or maybe more accurately, “BUY SOMETHING OR LEAVE.”

The sign reveals the pedestrian mall illusion; you aren’t really supposed to park your car and walk from shop to shop on the wide, brick sidewalks, or (god forbid) from the shops to the library. You’re supposed to use the acres of asphalt, parking your car directly in front of the shop you are to visit and afterwards drive to the next shop on your itinerary. This expectation is exceedingly clear when trying to walk from the street sidewalk to the shopping center sidewalk, as I did, where there is no choice but to use the driveway, hoping the cars won’t hit you as they enter. Cameron Village would do better to welcome library patrons (and real pedestrians), to convert them to shopping center patrons, though it is more likely that the same people are both at different times.

The pedestrian experience improves a little upon approaching the building. The library’s parking lot extends up to the patterned sidewalk, perhaps mistakenly so given the concrete planters and black lines negating where three parking places had blocked the entrance. The awning, in combination with the three-foot-high lights lining the sidewalk, almost has the sheltered feeling of an arcade. But the automatic sliding-glass doors of the entry and the vestibule fail to differentiate the building from a grocery-store.

On the inside, however, the external hostility and the glass façade’s dominance are surprisingly absent. Instead, the building is open around a dramatic three-story atrium housing an attempt at a grand stair and a glass elevator. Glass railings along the upper balconies allow views into the adjoining spaces.

On the second floor, at the south end of the atrium, the façade is a comfortable companion due its separation from the activity of the parking lot and the sidewalk. Looking out from this spot, you can see that the useless-looking shade devices work quite well because of their airplane-wing-shaped fins. Indirect light is abundant, both from the shaded windows and from a continuous light-shelf above that doubles as a soffit.

On the north side of the second floor is a view-window that looks out over the access alley and the two apartment buildings on the other side of it, with their little lawns. The “view” is dominated by power lines and the concrete corridor. Cherry Huffman Architects probably didn’t realize this would be the view, but the result is an honesty of context. This is where the building is; this is what a lot of Raleigh looks like. Here is a civic building that acknowledges its context allowing for discussion of the built environment.

During my visit, middle-school kids were excitedly positioning themselves in various locations opposite each other and on different levels to explore how they could be physically separate but visually connected. Though over-scaled, the interior of the new library is shockingly communal, contrary to the inhospitable Cameron Village Shopping Center and Raleigh’s lack of a public realm.