Pasadena Central Library, West Wing

When it comes to Pasadena's Central Library, there might be no better tour guide than Dan McLaughlin, Librarian, Archivist and Pasadena historian. Lucky me, I asked him for a tour and he said yes. He even held my book, Act As If, when I took his picture. (Which I did not ask him to do but I wasn't going to turn him down.)

Dan is also an author of novels, plays and history books, two of which I purchased at Art Night. You may remember Pasadena Pursuit, the Pasadena Museum of History exhibit he curated across the hall from Ann Erdman's Mystery History.

I'm working on my new novel and it takes place in a library. It might even take place in Pasadena. For research and inspiration, I hoped to snoop around, above and behind things in Pasadena's Myron Hunt-designed, 1927-opened, 130,000 square foot Central Library.

Let's start with the library's west wing, which is way bigger than I imagined it could be.

When you enter the door west of the check-out desk where it says "Staff Only," a corridor takes you past a coffee room and several offices. Pretty soon you come upon this long room where books are being checked in and catalogued. I'm standing near the west end of the room. The windows face out onto the parking lot. Does the purple protect workers and books from the sun? The door at the far end opens onto the hallway that leads from the parking lot into the library.

We're on the second floor now, right above where I was standing when I took the previous shot. I hope the employees don't mind me showing their lounge. I think it's pretty nice. Very roomy and comfy, with a kitchen off to the left. The coffee room on the first floor is a lot smaller. This one's more like a full kitchen.

I never knew about this and it's hiding in plain view! The walkway leads from the lounge to the office pictured below. You can look north over the parking lot and to the mountains from here. Next time I'm at the library, I'm going to look up from the parking lot and see if I can spot it.

We're looking toward the mountains. More purple. I'm gonna go with sun protection.

Dan asked me to be careful about taking photos of library patrons. "We like people to feel safe here," he said, "we protect their privacy." I don't think you can recognize anyone in this photo of the Main Hall, taken from the second floor balcony looking east. The Hall's floor is cork, to reduce noise. The woodwork is quarter-sawn oak.

An interesting tale about the chandeliers: they're replicas of the ones Myron Hunt designed for the building. Other lights were installed in the 1960's "which obscured the beautiful ceilings," and no one knows what happened to the originals. But Hunt had designed the same ones for the Huntington Library, and these are copies of the Huntington's.

I took about a million photos and I'll post more. But I want to thank the library staff right now, and especially Dan McLaughlin. I had hoped to be inspired by my tour and I haven't stopped writing since.

Do you want an architectural tour of the Pasadena Central Library? Yes, you may have one.

Carnegie Observatories, III

Today we know this as the Andromeda galaxy, or M31. But it was known as the Andromeda nebula when this negative was taken. Edwin Hubble crossed out the "n" (which meant nova) and wrote "VAR!" in bright red, indicating he had found a variable star in the Andromeda nebula. "That first discovery of a variable star meant he could measure distance to Andromeda and show that it was in fact very, very far away and not part of our Milky Way at all," says Dr. Cindy Hunt, Caltech PhD and head of Social Media for the Carnegie Observatories. This unique plate shows Hubble's search for more variable stars in Andromeda, and you can even see "V4!!!" in Hubble's handwriting.

Even though we visited the one building in Pasadena (designed by Myron Hunt), The Carnegie Observatories is plural because it's several different observatories supported by private donations and endowments. For the last couple of posts we've been talking about the Carnegie Observatories' archive of glass plates: "astrophoto" negatives of space taken in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries.

Halley's comet, 1910.

I love the wooden boxes. Each is unique. But Dr. Hunt knows where everything is.

Not a great photo, but I like it. The Moon in a hand-labeled filing cabinet continues the theme of "a hundred years of boggling the mind."

This developed negative of the moon is from 1919. Think of how brand new it all was then. It's been nearly a hundred years. Have you seen the latest images from Pluto?

Cindy shows me glass plates. We looked at the moon, the sun, comets, galaxies, you name it.

I think she likes her job.

Cindy showed us a lot, but there was one thing she couldn't show us.

The original plate, the one Edwin Hubble took when he knew he'd discovered the expansion of the universe, is not kept here. It's too valuable. What we saw was a fine replica.

You can see many of these glass plates, and other exciting space stuff old and new, at the Carnegie Observatories Open House on Sunday, October 18th 2-5 pm. Be sure to RSVP! It's a family-friendly event. Check out one of Pasadena's little secrets.

La Casita del Arroyo

That's the far west end of the historic Colorado Street Bridge out across the way. Between us and it lies Lower Arroyo Park. The Arroyo Seco runs deep here, with the trees you see growing tall from its depths and water, hikers, runners, dogs and horses you don't see coursing through it.

We're looking out of a window from La Casita Del Arroyo, a Pasadena Cultural Heritage Landmark "designed in 1932 by Architect Myron Hunt and built by unemployed workers during the depression," according to Pasadena Public Works.

You can rent La Casita, did you know that? I don't know this stuff until I want to post a picture. I have to do the research. I'm not a fountain of knowledge (there, now I've said it). I could guess about it, but then we'd be calling the blog Pasadena Daily Whatever (which has a nice ring to it on my lazy days).

If you have your event at La Casita you'll have some spectacular views, not least of which is the bridge at night. If you have your event during the day, you may have a hiker or two stopping by the buffet. But whenever you have it, you'll have it with a helping of history.