Saving Century II: The Irreplaceable Saucer of the Midwest

When I moved to New York City twenty years ago, I promised my family that I would try to return home at least once a year. As my work responsibilities grew and my personal life expanded, coordinating these trips became more complicated, but I kept my vow for the most part. Save the half dozen times I chose to fly straight through to Kansas City, renting a car to complete the trip to Wichita, I primarily flew out of LaGuardia at the crack of dawn with connecting flights to tinier airplanes through Atlanta or Chicago, finally landing sometime around noon Central Standard Time at the old Wichita Midcontinent airport. No matter how tired or frazzled I might feel from the hustle and jumble of air travel, I always looked forward to driving the flyover span of US 400 toward my mother’s home on the east side of town. Past the flat boxes of retail, through old neighborhoods thick with trees, the proud spire of the Friends University clocktower, then a curve, a sweep upward, and suddenly, to the north, the singular skyscape of downtown Wichita.

It has always been a comfort and a thrill to see it, the color wheel cross-section of light, bright blues, the monolithic flight control tower of the Garvey building, the black glass hulk of the former Bank 4, the improbable brutalist Lego transformer that is the old library, and that bodacious saucer, somehow futuristic yet still mid-century modern and forever too cool for school, the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center.

The old, brutalist library at night.

The first, informal whispers that the old library and Century II might be leveled for downtown redevelopment was met by many Wichita natives as far-fetched and, frankly, unthinkable. Buildings are not paper cups to be tossed after use, and buildings as architecturally significant as Century II and the old library are certainly far beyond mere "structures." This wouldn’t be like tearing down an old Costco or Wal-Mart. These buildings are works of art. With a little refurbishment and a bit of repurposing, they have decades of life still left in them. Unfortunately (and completely unsurprisingly), the same minds that shoehorned the uninspired Intrust Arena downtown--with little regard to aesthetics or parking, it seems--are at it again. Populous, as part of the deceptively named Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition, promoted a rigged “community outreach” by means of a push poll, and initially proposed a selection of five plans for redevelopment on the river, only one of which kept Century II. It is clear that little to no effort was put into using the buildings we already have. Why refurbish, repurpose, and rebrand solid works of art that were built to last when you can build new, prefab, cheaply constructed boxes that will be ready to tear down in less than thirty years for yet another money grab?

Back in her library glory, full of stacks.

The corruption at the root of Century II’s possible demise has been remarkably slow and unabashedly deliberate. While Wichitans lived their lives, paid their bills, grew their gardens, and raised their kids, the city’s plan for Century II was to simply let it go to seed. Instead of caring for this remarkable building, an irreplaceable piece of architecture, the city manager decided to just let it rot. Paint and power washing was put aside, improvements were not made, and only the most critical of broken things were fixed. The plan, it seems, was to let it slowly deteriorate, allowing the facilities to become so rundown, outdated, and under resourced that the city manager could finally point to it and say, See, it is “no longer viable.” The citizens would look upon the faded, dirty structure and think “yes, we deserve something better.” Something shiny and new. They would forget that Century II was properly maintained for decades, a lovely, strange, one-of-a-kind centerpiece to Wichita’s skyline and treated thusly. Not all of us have forgotten.

Rendering 1. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

Using the word “legacy” to describe the pre-fab, mini-mall village the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition has in mind is particularly galling. Unless, of course, the lowest bid, aesthetically inconsequential strip mall mediocrity littered across the country is anyone’s idea of a suitable “legacy” for their beloved town. There is a reason that the three “concept” images featured on the RLMP website are vague and almost comically misleading. The first focuses the Arkansas River, depicting it in a decidedly bluer hue that it has ever been this century (or last, or ever, maybe). There is an inset swimming area that should run chills of horror down the spine of anyone who learned canoeing at North High, or has ever braved the river in a kayak, or has ever just walked by the river and caught a heady punch of its aroma. Even in this rendering, the “dream” river dominates, and the rest is obscured by trees and mobs of Wichitans, apparently wild to get up close and personal to the dank and dirty in the proposed river pool. What great works of architectural genius are slated to replace our beloved Century II and library? What daring design is just over the horizon?

Rendering 2. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The second concept image features more Wichitans enjoying the expansive park space that would stand in place of where Century II is now. The park layout is flat, plain, and uninteresting. It is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified suburban lawn. We already have a glorified suburban lawn downtown in the desperately trendy, oft-hyped Naftzger Park. Likewise, Wichita already has downtown-adjacent parks that follow the river and offer far more than bland views. The rendering primarily shows people and park space and very little of the structures that the RLMP coalition plans to make or break our city’s lasting “legacy.”

Rendering 3. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The last concept image shows the grand design of the new structures, sort of, depicting a generalized, very preliminary version of what the new development will have to offer. There will be two separate venues to replace the one Century II—a performing arts venue and a convention center—two vague rectangles of space that beg the question that if Century II was not fulfilling the entertainment needs of Wichita, why was the Intrust Bank Arena not conceived and constructed to meet those needs back in 2010? The rest of the structures and spaces in the rendering are either park space or the grimly labeled “mixed use,” which brings to mind the fate of the once-lovely little downtown park of my childhood, the aforementioned Naftzger Park, which has now been reduced to an overrated median strip next to mass-produced, derivative commercial buildings. “Mixed use” will likely be restaurants (great) and retail (maybe great depending on what ends up there), but will also likely include office and residential space. Since existing commercial and residential areas downtown are nowhere near maximum capacity, one wonders just who will be utilizing this new, “mixed use” development in the long run? Or are these just short-term goals with no long-term plans?

Winter CII

It would appear that the coalition at least has a dark sense of humor, where their deliberate use of the word “legacy” in their name could easily be construed as petty trolling. One of the proposed parks, which appears to be right in the demolished footprint of Century II, is named “Century Park.” Why? As an homage to the beautiful structure that once stood there with its cool, curved lines, bold and stark and extraordinary? Or is this just a placeholder name some snarky designer thought appropriate, akin to dancing on the grave of ingenuity and creativity, “so long as we get paid” sort of thing? What I do see when I look at that last concept drawing is a whole lot of boxy boxes of no consequence or value replacing buildings that have history, meaning, depth, and beauty.

Night angles of the old library.

Whenever I’ve traveled to popular destinations—New York, London, Seattle, Paris, New Orleans—what always strikes me first is the heft of History all around me. The stalwart permanence of the place. There is always new mixed in—new light fixtures, buildings, parks, ideas—but the old remains. People might go to New York to see a particular show at Madison Square Garden, but they do not go to New York to visit Madison Square Garden for the sake of Madison Square Garden. They do not go to see a single glass skyscraper, though they might appreciate it in the plethora of so many glass skyscrapers. And they certainly do not go to New York to see mini-malls, Super Targets, or Applebee’s. They go to see those stately brownstones lining the old neighborhoods, the elegant spire of the Chrysler Building, the handsome art deco wonder that is the Empire State Building. They walk miles to see the city in all her grandest splendor, the remarkable craft of mason work by hands folded generations ago, the beautiful, etched grace of a city cobbled together by competing interests, compelling stories, and the wearying sweat and toil of our great-great grandfathers. The city’s structures are its legacy in this world, the mark of the human hands, and minds, and hearts who created them, and the history, the story of our human permanence, that even though we pass on, our carefully crafted structures, built ever upward and outward, remain.

Main entryway of the old library at an angle.

It’s been suggested that the whole middle of the country suffers from a sort of vague identity crisis. We are the “flyover states,” the great, blank expanse, the parking lot to the Rocky Mountains. We are small town, small minded. Our cities are stopovers to better places, run through with train tracks, a gas station hub to anywhere but here. Compared to aged cities like London, or ancient cities like Jerusalem, our settlements are mere blips on the timeline, of no consequence, maybe just one bad drought away from ghost towns run flat to dust. We don’t have the alluring seduction of Hollywood, the primeval forests of the redwoods, the shining, dangerous lights of Las Vegas, the breathtaking awe of the Grand Canyon. We are not a destination. We have only scraps of history. And what we do have, too many of us are eager to take for granted. Why is there never room for nostalgia when we speak of public spaces? Is this not one of the ways we create a sense of home and belonging? Arguments to delegitimize nostalgia as a worthy aspect to saving Century II and the old library are disingenuous, dismissive, and critically flawed.

What the city government of Wichita seems to have forgotten (and the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition could care less) is that the revitalization of downtown Wichita managed to take place using the existing structures that had been there for decades. Oldtown is called “Oldtown” for a reason. The brick streets, the old buildings, the sense of history, place—a true destination—made the revitalization of downtown what it is today. Ticky tacky, pressed board construction was never the answer. It is not the answer now. Nevertheless, the bulldozer of progress is chugging on. The old Wichita Eagle building (never a beauty contest winner, even in her youth) was replaced by the standard issue modern aesthetics of the new Cargill building, a similar mishmash of styles and “flairs” not unlike the new library (also near, but not on the river). Similarly styled buildings are rising up where the old Mead’s Corner used to stand and, most irritatingly, a new Fidelity megabank has gone up behind the quirky “Ho Ho” shaped Broadway Autopark, formerly the Knightly Parking Garage, on South Broadway, which was only just recently refurbished and repainted to now be obscured by yet another boxy box of boxness.

In a time when the world is on a precipice of survival, where we collectively seem to only half understand the need to re-use, re-source, and re-cycle, it is all the more tone deaf to tear down perfectly usable, perfectly astounding structures to replace them with stunted, cheap mediocrity. There is no time like the present to prove we are not locusts ever consuming, never building to stay, to stand, to commit, and not just to persevere but build true monuments to our audacity, our midwestern spirit to forge grain and stand into the wind, immovable and bound together. Do we leave crumbling detritus in our wake, choking the river, clogging the banks, or do we make a real effort to prove we as a people value beauty and art, and understand that we have already created something enduring to memorialize our grandest dreams in the name of our greatest virtues, institutions of learning and community? Our library, our Century II. Can we collectively say, Fly over us if you will, but we choose to leave something permanent and indelible, extraordinary and sublime. We dreamt big, wild, and limitless and shouted proudly that we loved this ground, these winding forks in the river, and wished to make our mark, leave sign of our daring, and state unequivocally that We Were Here.

Century II and the old library are worth saving. Instead of taking for granted the things that we have and striving for the banal, we could embrace a new century’s worth of science, education, arts, entertainment, work space, green space, community gathering place, and for a fraction of the cost of a hyped-up strip mall next to another bland park. We already have a sense of place, a monument to our community and generations past, but we’ve got to invest in it to make it prevail, otherwise we commit to a future of waystation grayness, the anyplace rest area in between more enticing destinations. Have your “mixed use” boxes, plan your grand monument suburban lawn maintenance—there are plenty of places around Wichita in desperate need of some investment and invigoration—but do not tear down the two buildings that make our skyline more than just vaguely memorable. Do not erase our identity—what makes us both identifiable and inscrutable—only to build nothing special at all.

All CII and old library photos are mine. If you want to see some truly gorgeous, professional photographs of these magnificent buildings, check out Mickey Shannon Photography and Drone-tography.

Wichita Central Library, 1967-2018, In Memoriam

Century II looms in the background,
 not acting in any way like a flying saucer.

Upon hearing that the Wichita Central Library would close its doors forever on May 6, my sister and I decided to take one last tour around the place, snapping final pics, and swapping stories of yore. She and I share similar sentimentality for the Ol' Brutal Beast, and more broadly seek to defend old, worthy structures and deflect the notion that newer is somehow always better. I do not believe that just any "old" building deserves reprieve—after all, every era births its own special, cheaply made, poorly planned monstrosities—but truly special elder buildings deserve extra care and consideration. The former Wichita Central Library, now retired, is one of them.

When you look at downtown Wichita from the raised vantage of US highway 54/400, the Central Library appears quite small, embedded at the fore of larger bulks of the commercial buildings that make up downtown proper. Wichita's version of skyscrapers, squat little buildings for the most part, reach their highest peak with the so-called "Epic Center," which takes the bragging rights for tallest building in Kansas (22 stories, 385 feet to the tippy top). I remember when they built it, how much I wanted to like it (it was !EPIC! after all), but even at that young age I knew it was a flawed thing. Aside from the plain face of it and tiny windows, the building is shaped like a stunted fountain pen. There's something about a short-tallish building with a reaching, pointy little tip, so desperate to seem bigger that it really is. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere...

Broken light.

Information.

North Stacks, 1st floor.

From that higher vantage, driving East/West, the Epic Center is to the north, the farthest of the skyscrapers from the main core of downtown Wichita. Much closer stands my favorite building of all, the Garvey Center. I grew up with my eyes always tilted toward its strange, aquamarine heights, the octangular cap, a thousand antennas spiking out the top, glowing little red blips at night. It is an air traffic control tower with delusions of grandeur. Garvey Center is somehow garish, absurd, and ordinary all at once. I can't think of a better representation for Wichita (save one) and would honestly mouth-kick anyone who dared suggest that it be changed in any way. Apparently the Garvey Center now has "luxury apartments," and let me tell you this is something that will keep me awake at night. WANT. TO LIVE. IN AQUA TOWER.

View eastward from the North Stacks.
The former central library and my sister's bike.

But from highway 54/400, the real colossus that dwarfs the Central Library stands just west of it, the iconic Century II, an ancient derelict spacecraft that crash landed in downtown Wichita around the same time the library was built. Oh sure there's plenty of "documentation" and "legal paperwork" claiming its origins are terrestrial and completely mundane, but we all know the truth, just look at the thing. Given the terrible, terrible things city leaders have done over the years (or allowed to happen, lookin' at you Twin Lakes horror show), it should come as zero shock that people want to tear Century II down. These local trendsetters would knock down the Coliseum to install another squaty brick "clock tower" Commerce Bank branch if given enough capital to do it. It's my firm belief that this is what has saved some of the architectural jewels of Wichita over the years—no money. Which is sad. It is my profound hope that Century II and the old Central Library are spared the wrecking ball, but in a world where Madison Square Garden was allowed to happen, I'm not holding my breath. If they did knock it down, the singular, most defining landmark of the Wichita skyline would be gone. Then we really would be basic bitches. Mark my words, city leaders!

Down to the basement to learn about local history and genealogy. 

View up to the 1st floor from the basement.

It is strange that this now outdated library—dwarfed by the buildings surrounding it, strange in design, sparing in construction—can seem so cavernous and overwhelming once you pass through the doors, the foyer, the security and circulation desks, and enter either wing. The north and south sides of the building are completely open two stories high, with stacks around each perimeter and communal desks set in rows at the center. When I was a kid, the stacks on the south side were arranged so that some of those desks were lined up against the east window walls, but it hasn't been like that in years. I always assumed it was a security thing, but it was a loss nonetheless. I worked on book reports at those desks, read Asimov, and giggled whispers to my friends.

There is no getting around the fact that the interior is dated. The primary carpeting, a horrid eyesore meant to cause blindness and brain damage, has definitely been replaced since I grew up here, but much of the interior is exactly the same. The desks are the same, the chairs are the same, even some of the lounge furniture is the same. You can see the wear and tear, but for at least some of these objects, it's fifty years of wear and tear. Considering this, the old brute is actually holding up remarkably well.

I cannot help but think of that beaten-to-hell library back in Utah, Magna, how it was so new, so similar to many of the other new libraries I've visited, and yet how it clearly had been abused by patrons over a very short life span. And it wasn't just an errant clipping of a desk edge that split prefab from cheap vinyl, it was worn edges on furniture that was not meant to outlast the average span of securing a bachelors degree. Communities with money to burn, please listen to this if nothing else: Do the math! One of the biggest takeaways from my trip around the country is the prevalent unwillingness of decision makers to invest in hardy, sturdy, rough-and-tumble, quality materials not only for the construction of the library itself but for all the necessary interior materials, including fixtures, furniture, carpets, and so on. It's safe to bet that carpet will have to be replaced fairly regularly in any well-used common space, but outfitting libraries with rickety, clicked together, IKEA-standard furniture will end up costing a community more in the end. Hear me, peoples! Invest in your common endeavors. It is worth it!

Despite rolling with the punches and enduring fifty years of patronage, the Wichita Central Library simply could not keep up with technology. It's not wired for the times, and in such a sparing building, there is no acceptable way to retrofit it to meet the needs of the twenty-first century. I worked in the Flatiron building for over a decade, and loved the envious comments and hungry questions about the interior. Was it as beautiful as the outside? What's it like to work in such an iconic building? Well, drafty. Creaky. Leaky. Squeaky. Many of the offices are weirdly angular and ill-fitting for rectangular desks, file cabinets, square chairs. There are legions of "water bugs" (which look suspiciously identical to cockroaches HMMM) skittering high above workers' heads day in, day out. One dropped from the ceiling right next to my friend as she was working late one night. Dropped. From the CEILING. Almost in her hair. She was traumatized. Wonderful building, beautiful building. Old building.

Seating in the South Stacks.

And from whence did yon water bug drop? Well, from the drop ceiling of course. Because that's how you retrofit a building built in 1902. We saw the actual ceiling once. There was a mighty flood after an icy, long weekend ruptured the pipes above our floor and the calamity wasn't discovered until water started leaking out of the elevator shafts on the first floor. It disintegrated the drop-roof tiles completely. It also ruined thousands of dollars worth of equipment, computers, fax machines, copiers, and God knows how much paper—administrative, manuscripts, books. It was a disaster. But we got to see how far up those walls really went (far!), the aged and peeling paint from Ago (lead!), and thousands of wires weaving every which way, bound in bunches and intersections with zip ties.

The allure of the Flatiron is the hard spade shape thrust against the flood of humanity flowing at its intersections, Fifth Avenue, Broadway, 23rd Street, that lovely, carved sandstone, and large widows set all throughout. It is a giant ship from the beginning of a new era in the modern world, slim, tall, improbable, sublime. A little bit of ceiling space could be spared, and was, to make it a modern(ish) office space. The same could never be done for the Wichita Central Library.

South Stacks, delighting in the lighting, shot from every angle, 

and one caney plant in need of pruning (years ago).

South Stacks, a view of the main stairway.

Those wings, those glorious wings! The breathtaking space, spanning high and far. No drop ceilings allowed. When we visited the library for the last time, I marveled out how easy it was to get caught up in those wings, all that light streaming in, the intoxicating smell of books everywhere. I swear I could still smell the old card catalog, even though it is years gone and God knows where. If you had spent a significant amount of time sifting through those cards, opening and shutting those drawers (carefully, for fear of getting stern looks from library staff), you would know that the card catalog had a similar smell to books—it's paper and wood after all—but there was also a tinge of something else. Strong and creamy and spicy. And I swear it lingers still, somehow, despite the years between. There's no place in Wichita that gives me a more jolting sense of recall than the old Central Library. As we all know, smell and memory are inexorably linked.

One of the things I never appreciated about the Central Library when I was a child was the lateral slats of light pulling patrons forward from the relative dark of the front foyer into the library proper. There sitting central and adrift alone under those running cleaved segments—the fluorescents blurred, the optics bent, bouncing off the wood sections to create a kind of light that seems almost natural, like sunlight where none could possibly exist—the information desk sits forever unmanned. When I was young, there was always someone there, but recently, more often than not, it stood empty and seemingly without purpose. This always struck me harder than anything else, whether it was due to the upcoming relocation to the new library, shutting down old services or redirecting resources, I don't know. But than unmanned information desk unnerved me and set my stomach all aquiver. Quiet little deaths.

Southwest corner, windows from floor to ceiling. 

To the left of the information desk (or south) is the main stairwell up to the second and third floors. Just past the desk, after a wide swatch of open floor where the card catalogs used to be, is another stairway leading down to the basement, and another quirk in an already quirky space. Growing up, the basement space was there, but the majority of it was not for public access. I have no idea what was going on down there—records, conspiracies, seances—but I never had reason to explore it until recently. This is where genealogy and local history is housed. It is also the only place in the library where drinks are strictly forbidden. It's a fun notion, descending to the ooky-spooky basement to look through our collective past, but honestly whoever thought to carpet the stairs in blue and the basement in red deserves a wet kiss on the mouth. It looks so damn slick, so damn cool, so utterly sexy and WILDASS. And such a groovy departure from the seizure-inducing, emetically inspirational carpeting elsewhere in the building.

You wanna tell me these chairs didn't see the Johnson administration? Get outta here. This is the little seating area between the elevators and the main staircase on the second floor. The "view" behind the seating area has always been a weird space, since it is basically the flat, unattractive roof above circulation, "Friends of the Library," and the front foyer. It's really just a broad swath of parking lot for bird crap and trash. I always thought it would make a nice permanent garden space if they could figure out how to do it wink wink nudge nudge. Like seriously, grass and trees. Something other than tarry gravel?

A view of the North Wing from the second floor.

A view of the South Wing from the second floor.

The second floor is basically within the same space as the main foyer on the first floor with open views over the north and south wings. This area houses the hilarious and beloved "Business Center," mostly unexplored by yours truly other than to fawn over the old timey typewriters and find an open desk with an extension cord/power strip. These desks, which featured work spaces, chairs, and shelving for periodicals and reference materials relating to all things work (jobs, finance, resume building, etc.), were largely taken up by people charging phones and other electronics. I worked there successfully once, not so successfully other times. It wasn't a quiet space. But it afforded great views over the vast wings...and those typewriters!

South wing and concrete brutalism appreciation.

(Addendum: Our typing teacher in high school was an efficient, serious older man with white hair and a mustache. I wish I could remember his name. He insisted we practice not only on the humming monsters that were the electronic typewriters, but on the horrid murder weapons, heavy as anvils, sharp and wicked and cursed, that were the manual typewriters. Yes, we had actual manual typewriters in typing class. Just a couple, for learning and suffering and character building. I am not sure I got much out of the exercise other than a sincere appreciation of technological progress. I'll never type like a possessed monkey all fingers flying whilst texting on my phone, but hey, at least I don't have to stand on the damn keys and stomp to put one simple word—"halp" probably—in faded ink on blue white paper ever again.

Anyway, that's who I think of whenever I see that Business and Technical sign and the lonely electric typewriter poised waiting and ready to serve should its time every come around again. Thanks for the character building, Mr. Typing Teacher Man!)

Groovy waiting area outside of Admin, 3rd Floor.

The third floor, though. I lived on the third floor. All those books about celebrities! The cork wall! The haunted piano! When I was a kid, there was no such thing as DVDs and barely such a thing as a videotape. And you could not check any such things out at the library. Though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that audio vinyl, 8-tracks, or cassette tapes were available for loan (or at least listening on-site). If that ever was a reality, I wasn't cognizant of it.

The third floor also features the poster and paintings loan section--something I thought I wasn't quite understanding until I saw something exactly like it—except worse and therefore so much better—in Bismark, North Dakota. It's not a crazy notion to loan artwork (or a facsimile thereof, anyhow) but the fact that both Bismark and Wichita had some seriously dated, incredibly tacky and ollllld offerings was indeed charming and silly and so wrong it was right. In those last days of the Wichita Central Library, they had those items on sale at the "Friends of the Library" section of the building, a makeshift space housed opposite circulation. Some pieces of art were old in a way that made me wonder if they were actually quite valuable...or would be sooner than any of us is really prepared to conceptualize. The 1980s were so chic, so pastel-and-black, so Nagel, but really so awful. Awfully gorgeous? I don't know...and may never have the perspective to properly assess such a thing. But they had some 80s prints for sale, gold plastic frames and all.

3rd Floor Chic.

This blog entry is loaded with references to the past: what I saw, what I heard, what I smelled. How things were in the olden days, how they persist in existing in the present days, and how I love the Central Library for what it was, what it still is, and hope that others can see past its technological shortcomings to find a way to give it a second life. Clearly there's a connection to my second life somewhere in there (ahem) and I am not too deluded to see that.

All of the above: Third floor stacks.

Third floor foyer.

But there is also a connection to memory and public spaces, how we come about a sense of history. A sense of purpose and permanence for us all. And that is, without a doubt, banked in the design and construction of permanent spaces, building something useful and memorable, a place that people not only must go to, but want to go to, spend some time, forge some memories, make it part of their oral histories, someday into written histories, and passed down from one generation to the next. Not every public space can live up to such lofty ideals, but we should want them to. For certain spaces, it must be a consideration. Libraries house our histories, our dreams. They are monuments to our hopeful permanence on this planet, aware that we are so momentary as individuals, but in some ways eternal in the halls of repositories, written in words, documented in historic occasions, our fingers on the pages.

A cork wall (left) and a stylish lounger with metal framing and corners 

so sharp you could extract an organ if you fell just right. PROBABLY 

ORIGINAL TO THE BUILDING. Also, located directly outside the 

Children's section. Where else?

Looking down the main stair case
from the 3rd floor.

I loved the third floor, "Hollywood" section of the library for the same reason I love the rest of it. Connectedness, a sense of history, little sparkling filaments pressed to paper and made indelible. Notions noted, imagination inked, made permanent, cataloged, and shelved. And legitimate because we say it is, given permanence in a world that feels like anything but. A space reserved just for that and nothing else. And doors open for anyone to come inside, travel the aisles, and lay hands on that one thing that will light them up. Maybe it's Song of Solomon, maybe it's A Brief History of Time. Hell, maybe it's the World Book series, still in publication despite the, you know, Internet (and featuring Will Smith's AI nightmare for the 2018 edition, apparently? I love seeing the World Book in libraries, I'm not gonna lie. It's like a big FU to Wikipedia and the insane amount of data available in the average person's pocket these days but SO WHAT we have a cool series of real paper BOOKS that make a whole picture from the spines when you place all the volumes together on a shelf so nyeh).

 A handsome display in the 3rd floor foyer.

And when I pass the old Central Library now, I cannot help but feel a hollow rooing at the moon inside; wistful, sad, but understanding that it could no longer live as a library...for now. Who knows, someday we may laugh at the idea of wired-anything, much as we do now when we relate stories of talking to our friends on rotary phones, wrapped around the cord, picking at the wallpaper nearby, bound with boundless energy nowhere to go except screeching "no wayyyyyyy" into the receiver, out into the ether, to reach the ear of a similarly imprisoned compatriot who also agrees no wayyyy. So the old library sits, an old rotary phone, her stacks gutted, her furniture sold or donated, her purpose unknown. I hope the City of Wichita does right by her. There is so much potential if you just open your eyes and see it.

Up next, my Initial, Highly Opinionated, Completely Biased and Unfair Review of the New Advanced Learning Library (a.k.a. the new central library)...

One last look. Brutal to the end.

Wichita Public Library, Main Branch, Wichita, KS

Today is the first day of the second leg of my trip. I drove from Wichita to Dodge City's public library, where I set up shop to finish my Mulvane entry (LUV) and start my Wichita Central Library entry (ugh). I only had time to go through the photos before I jaunted over to the Pioneer Memorial Library in Colby, Kansas, but it put me in a querulous mood that I've only been able to shake by yelling along to my Ipod as I made my way here.

What was true before is true still: I love the main branch of the Wichita Public Library system. The architecture still takes my breath away. So much of the interior design is still original to when I was growing up, and the mercilessly stony walls and huge windows make me wildly happy. It was here that a world outside of my small microcosm cracked open for me and grew. It was here where I knew exactly where to find the books I was looking for, only checking the card catalog when I was there for a school report. I sat at the desks on many occasions, staring up at the grand ceiling, in love with all that bombastic space. It was a dream, a machine, a star cruiser. All those books, all those places and people--things beyond me and my tiny life--it was a ship, a hot rocket, and it lit up everything inside, all dials turned, inevitably, to eleven.

But this is also the place where I was sexually assaulted by a homeless man when I was a young teen. So I hate the Main Branch of the Wichita Library. I fucking hate it and I want to punch it in its fucking face.

Of course I feel like I have to qualify my status as a "young" teen at the time of the incident, to make it all the more clear how truly terrible it was, as though old teens and adults don't count...as much. Why do we do that? If it happened yesterday, we should all be just as mad. We should all be furious.

One of the reasons I visited all of the Wichita area branches before the main one is because my expectations were in the basement...of Hell. And it was important to report how library staff has interacted with me in the present--all good to excellent--because of what happened that day and how I remembered their faces, how helpless and frozen they were. Nobody did anything. I was just left to deal with the aftermath and figure out how to process it.

I am happy to report that the Main Branch now has security. He is in full regalia, black button up and black pants, with all the shiny badges and patches to clarify his responsibility in this establishment. All Wichita libraries have the "Safe Place" signage on the front doors, including the main branch, and don't think this didn't pull a wistful harrumph out of me as I stood there contemplating it before I went in.

But aside from the memories that inevitably spilled out during my visit, my recent tour and time in the Central Branch was positive. And there were far more sweet memories than bitter.



Every time I walk up to the main branch, I start feeling the library feelings. This is an emotion made up of all sorts of sub-emotions, like glee (I get to check out books!), happiness (I know what books I want!), trepidation (Stranger Danger Alert), pre-annoyance (What if someone took my book?), and nostalgia (mmmbooks). This library was My library, my first true library love, and though something ugly happened here, I still love it to the moon and back and all that. And even when I have no intention of getting anything--like this last time--the old catalog of library feelings shuffles through my head because of muscle memory. It's a part of what made me, for better or worse.

The architecture of the main branch will always be the beginning and end of all library design in my eyes--those concrete walls, tinted glass, and boxed lights. The dark wood and a glowy gloom everywhere, despite all the natural light. I realize that the ol' girl is Objectively Ugly, but Brutalism pretty much promises you a harsh and dramatic smack in the face just in its name alone, so...no spoilers there. She displays her cracked bones with a wide set, predatory smile, bared bright and beckoning. She's so wretched you have to love her.

What I like about the library, and Century II which resides right next to it, is just how Far Out and Completely Whacked both ideas were at the time of conception. It was the late 60s, sure, but it was also Wichita. In Kansas. But the Board responsible for these creations received two proposals--one for a Building Block from from the Fourth Dimension, the other a Flying Saucer--and instead of chortling indignantly, twirling their mustaches, and moving on to build squares with columns (Corinthian if you are lucky), they winked, smiled, and said, "Groovy, dude, let's do it." (dramatization, may not reflect reality, but really, really should)


When you walk into the library, the stone slat design carries through to the inside, casting formidable shadows across the dark wood interior. One unfortunate addition since my childhood (I think I'd remember, but who knows) is the hideous carpet they bought on sale at Jabara's (please say it was Jabara's) and laid out on all three floors to harass and terrorize the patrons. The carpet is either meant to distract from the age of the library as a whole, or it is meant to cause seizures. Whatever reason was given on paper, the true intention had to be malevolent.

There's a cool lighting fixture above the entry point down the middle of the library's main floor, past circulation toward the back of the building. As I admired it, I felt that familiar disturbance in the matrix, and I could've sworn the circulation desk used to be twice as long. Chalk it up to a child's memory, where everything is just More (but I say they changed it, they did). The mis-memory could almost jar a person into thinking she's in the wrong place, at least until entering the main part of the library, each wing unfurling in vast, dual cathedrals of concrete, glass, and mellow light.

At the very back of the first floor is the computer room (glassed in) and just before it are stairs leading down to the basement (archives, I believe--it used to be off limits, so I didn't go down there this time around, either). There are two floors above the first, with the second only taking up the same amount of space as circulation, the basement stairwell bay, and the computer room--the sides are open so you can look out over the rest of the library on either side, and it is wonderful. On each side of the main thoroughfare are identical cubes of space: massive, wide open, and wondrous. This is where the fiction, reference, and some nonfiction can be found. The south side is fiction, the north side is reference. Or, at least it was...my exploration of the shelves themselves was cursory at best.

I will not describe the assault that happened to me in the north side stacks--it was horrible, I felt sick to my stomach for a long time after, and would blush furiously whenever I thought of it well into my twenties. It took a long time for the shame and embarrassment I felt to turn into a hard, black rock of RAGE that I would happily beat a particular person half to death with, if I only knew where he was. And that's enough to know. But here is where it happened, right in the stacks. After I chased him and failed to motivate library staff to help me catch him, or call someone, or just DO something, I finally just ran up to the third floor to the bathroom. See the square little window? All of the women's bathroom windows are like that. It is a pinhole compared to the rest of the library's vast openness, and it now reminds me of the tunnel vision that happens when a panic attack is going very, very badly. I used to think of it as a porthole on a cruiser--water boat or spaceship, either one. Now it just makes me fluttery and sweaty.

That's enough of that.




When I was a child, I never spent time on the second floor--it was all stuff I wasn't interested in or allowed to be--but I'm thrilled I took a look around the place this time. The Business and Technical Center is my absolute favorite thing. It's like time stopped and instead of wrecking it, they preserved it. I am sure there are uses for typewriters today (my car buying experience taught me that even dot matrix printers have a foothold in our present reality, as unreal as that may sound), but the whole scene was just too twee and darling not to document.

I had great fun photographing the weirdest parts of the library because, well, there were so many. So, so many. Like the bronze piece in the main foyer featured above? "Structure of Knowledge" it yells in cruel, serif font. Sounds like a Babel translation of Google translation of a German pop song, ay?

On the third floor I found mostly sadness. It is closed off from the breathtaking scope of the first and second floors' widemouthed, stark beauty, so it just looks like the basement of the basement of the DMV. In my teens, I spent a lot time on the third floor because that's where my idols lived. I learned all about Marilyn, Marlon, and Greta, and all their messy truths somehow managed to simultaneously break them down and build them up in my eyes. This is where the film and television books still reside, but now they share space with the DVDs, so the whole area has a used, broken hanger aesthetic like 3 A.M. K-Mart in Amarillo, Texas.

For your half bath decorating needs.

But the third floor is also where they keep their weirdest treasures. The Lonely Piano, for one. If anyone ever plays it, it's probably "Tiptoe through the Tulips," "I Just Called to Say I Love You," or similarly satanic shit. The third floor also features the Inexplicable Cork Wall. Which probably seemed like a Great Idea on day one. Day two, maybe week two. Perhaps the burnt toast look was intentional. But in such a dreary space, it just looks...burnt. And accidental. And something people who work there probably dream about, sweating and murmuring nononono. Not the Cork Wall.

The third floor also has some sort of framed art display/reference rack-thing, a scene very reminiscent of the olden days when we would peruse for prints at the college bookstore. Do they even still have those? To make it weirder if not weirdest, these prints are already framed. In their original, very old, sometimes tacky, totally dated frames. Terrible, terrible frames. It's like the Wichita Central Library raided Hobby Lobby back in September of 1999 and this is where they keep their stash. If anyone knows what this thing is, do tell. I was afraid to ask. (Yes, I will kick a face, but inquiring about the Frame Display of Bathroom Art seemed irrevocably dangerous. Les requetes dangereuses.)

As a former Stacks Maintenance Professional,
I had to document these lovelies.

I genuinely hope they have display cases for all this crazy crap in the new place.

Once I completed my circuit of the parts of the library I cared about (sorry basement), I decided to stake my claim on some prime real estate. There just happened to be an open table next to the computer aquarium, a lucky spot where I could sit with my back effectively to a big, concrete wall. If anyone attempted to get anywhere behind me, I would know it was shenanigans and proceed to Make A Terrible Scene*.

(*What, you've probably asked yourself, does she plan to do if something happens, or starts to happen, again? I've given that thought and, depending on the situation, have settled for the two step approach. Should a genuine threat arise, step 1. Get Loud. I've determined that the mentally unstable don't get private ownership of Acting Out in shared, public spaces. When I am threatened, I feel pretty goddamned unstable, too. Things will get shout-y, immediately. I will not be playing nice or negotiating for civility, either. If you encroach uninvited, you will get the claws. First verbal then, if need be, step 2. Flee or, if I am cornered, Fight. I remember an old Oprah where cops were advising women on how to behave in these sorts of situations. One of the cops made the point that we are programmed to be NICE and POLITE. Criminals know this and take advantage of it. It isn't going to help. My feeling is, Why be nice? Why bargain? Are they being nice? No.

For the record, I hope I never have to make these choices. But before I set out on this trip I knew I had to decide what I was going to do instead of hoping and wishing on a star that everything would go smoothly and nothing bad would happen. You have to be honest with yourself. What would you be willing to do to protect yourself? I do not believe there is one right answer to this question, either.)

I was able to write for a few hours uninterrupted (sort of)--all without headphones, anyway, and that is my test of a library's usefulness for study, contemplation, and creation. A few people approached and sat at the table next to mine, and two of them gave me an undeniable stinkface, which I understood. It was a very good table and I know I am not the only person who prefers to have her back covered at all times.

There was also a meeting room right next to where I was sitting, so people were going in an out pretty regularly for an hour, until finally whatever was happening reached its conclusion and 30 or so people left at once. They were all holding certificates, which could be a good/fun thing (pride! accomplishment!) or a bad/boring thing (work training! traffic violations! probation officers! pee cups!). I heard one person say "Oh My Gawd can we go now" so that suggests the latter, don't you think?

I wish I could say I exorcised all of my demons in this last visit to the Wichita Central Library, but we all know that's not how it works. Maybe sometimes or for some people, but for most, dealing with trauma is a process, just like it is for any part of your life that is complicated and hard. Going to rehab for 30 days will help (if you let it) but you're not cured, even though you get that dandy certificate saying you completed the program. You are on your way to being okay, and that's something. It is a HUGE something. It's the beginning of a process.

For me, touring all of these libraries has made the difference. And traveling by myself, doing things my sequestered self would have been horrified to face (sleeping in the car are you crazy), has made a difference as well. It also helps to confront the dark things from your past directly instead of peripherally, accidentally, fearfully. Whether we like it or not, these things belong to us. We can allow the darkness to keep twisting that knife, or we can take it, turn it, or break it, make it into something new, better, bolder--and God willing, stronger. Fortified. It isn't impossible.

Wide shot of Century II, the Central Library,
and my favorite building in Wichita, the Garvey Center.