Kendall Neighborhood Library, Houston, Texas

God, this is a beautiful library. I want to live in this library, though I'd change the interior just a bit. When I rolled up to Kendall Neighborhood Library, the very sight of it took my breath away. I know, I am the Corniest of all Cornballs to ever Corn, but it is true. I am an architecture fiend. It is a problem. I am not sorry.


When I was young I fancied myself a budding architect, primarily because the one peaceful class in all my middle school experience (ages 12-14) was Shop class, where we were allowed to draft in blissful silence, as well as make sharp things with dangerous tools. Our teacher was an uncompromising hardass, so no one ever messed around in that class--it was a beautiful timeout from the chaos that was Horace Mann Middle School (which I still hope will burn to the ground someday and I am definitely not sorry about that).



Anyway, you have the Math to Architect so that didn't work out, but my obsession with human-built beauty in the form of buildings has never waned. The cleaner the line, the more I howl at the moon, and the weirder the better. Initial posts of these Houston library photo sets to the Facebook group garnered a comment that they all look like the old Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstores, which is absolutely true. From what I can gather, a sort of library Renaissance happened in Houston at the end of the 90s through the early aughts, which all came full stop after the 2008 financial crisis, when every public service across the country stalled or was cut back to some degree. Library hours at the different branches in Houston are all about 8 hours total--for example, I rolled up to Kendall at 11:15 not realizing that the library did not open until noon (until 8) so had to wait in the lobby with a gaggle of seniors all trying to get their taxes done. I wonder how many full time employees (with benefits) actually work in the library system at this time, since we are well into our economic recovery--from my own experiences, I know management will cut where it can and is greedy for free labor. It's hard to give it up without proper incentives. If the library systems are working "as is" it won't change.

Kendall has a very interesting set up since the actual library space is not on the main floor--from the front entryway on floor one, there are meeting rooms, administrative offices, and a front desk; a stairway and elevator lead up to the second and third floors from there. The second floor is for adults (fiction, nonfiction, lounge chairs, and work desks, etc.) while the third floor is for kids and teens--there is even a teen section marked just for them, no doubt teeming with doomsday love stories and vampires sparkling in the grass. It's all brightly painted with light from the windows on all sides, and it should be no wonder that I witnessed at least one excited tyke fly off of the elevator to storm the floor, as it is a space clearly made for kids.

I've set up shop on the second floor next to a shiny meeting room and windows on both sides. This section of Houston (the Energy Corridor) is teeming with trees and reflective glass buildings -- the parking lot even has reserved spaces for electric cars to plug in and charge up. It's all very forward future leaning, and Kendall's pine stacks, clean lines, and brightly painted walls all turn in that direction, too, though admittedly in that pre-2008 era of skyrocketing housing prices and money to burn (on credit). I chose the libraries I wanted to visit on predetermined factors--already mentioned here--and must admit there is a point where I will crave a musty old library full of twisty corridors, crazy librarians, and haunted stacks. It is, after all, what libraries are to so many of us.

While I worked at Anschutz during most of my undergrad years, I was able to pick up some weekend hours at the main KU campus library: Watson. This lumbering, Gothic horror is the setting of many a shrieking nightmare or psychedelic dreamscape and I swear to God in Heaven if you ever pass by the state of Kansas, please try to go there because you really haven't experienced anything until you've wandered it's echoing, subterranean stacks. It is beautiful and terrifying and I might have to make my way back there on one of these road trips just to document it for posterity. Of course, they could have changed it since I worked there in the early 90s, but back then it was suffering from a drought of care and hadn't been painted, refurnished, or changed in decades. The most recently updated part of Watson at the time--the reading lounge, which could only be found by misadventure and was located somewhere in the windowless depths of the interior--was last decorated in the late 60s, with hippy dippy art and sad, flat bean bag chairs you wouldn't sit in on a dare. This was also the only room patrons could smoke, so there was always an acrid stench of burnt tobacco and tar that leeched into all the old ratty furniture and permeated the nearest stacks.

The stacks, though...yikes. And by Yikes I mean run for your lives, don't look back, this is where you die. They were freaky, freaky, freaky. They clanged and echoed and croaked. They were metal, and not just black or gray old metal, but painted over (and over and over) metal, primarily in an old, faded sky blue shade. I plan to visit my grandfather's battleship (the Texas) while I am here in Houston, but I've visited once before when Dave and I took a road trip here after college. Watson's stacks remind me of the interior of that old ship--craggly metal surfaces, tight spaces, and a peculiar lack of direction, all in a murky darkness where light dies a foot from each light source. I would do a four hour shift in the stacks on a Saturday morning (8-12) and it would feel like a full day--I would emerge drained, owlish, and shaky because something was just off about the place. I would get lost in the stacks easily, and the only elevators we could use were these old behemoths from the Beginning of Elevators where you had to close the grate, then the door, pull the crank, and hope to escape unharmed. In the stacks I'd find seriously weird stuff...I've blocked most of it, but I remember this random ass German book falling off the shelf I was placing books, and it had no right to be there, in that particular section, since it looked like some kind of sick children's book, with pictures of squished frogs, with juices flying everywhere and exclamation points and laughing faces.

You ever go to a party and you know immediately that something is off and you have to leave or something bad will happen? That's Watson. A doorway to a dark world, and if you hit the wrong button in those elevators it probably takes you straight to Hell. It was a terrifying place to work and I didn't do it for long. Yet.

I hope I find a Watson on my travels, I really do--it's quite something to experience a place that feels like something only partially within our reality. You will never get that in the safe Borders-like interiors of the libraries I've visited so far. And who doesn't love a good haunted house? Especially when you know you are probably going to be just fine. (probably)

Speaking of haunted/unreal spaces, there is one I really must talk about here and now and without delay: The Williams Tower. I noticed it on the first day traveling around Houston. You can see it from pretty far away as it stands high above the buildings around it. I read about it on Wikipedia and there's nothing too special about it (completed 1983, super tall, glass) but let me be clear: It is special. Very special. Because from every vantage point in the distance, it looks like a black and white drawing. A very sophisticated drawing, no doubt, but something sketched with a pencil on paper, then placed in a 3D, real life skyline to stand there being weird, drawing peripheral attention from drivers whizzing by on the highway at 70 mph so that they can think whaaaaat and crash into a tractor trailer. It is a jarring specter and I highly recommend viewing it from a safe vantage if you are ever in Houston. Once you get closer, it starts to take shape and real color (black tinted, reflective glass) and is truly a breathtaking skyscraper to behold, but I suggest viewing it from afar first. It feels like an alternate universe is wavering in and out and you were just lucky enough to catch it.

 Totally normal, not haunted trees outside of Kendall.