Beacon Hill is one of five branches, all south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, that saw declining use in the 2010s, possibly because job-seekers in the city's less affluent southern half had been using libraries during Seattle's 2008-2012 recession.[7]
History
Beacon Hill Branch was housed in a number of locations, including a location at 2519 15th Avenue South converted to a library in 1962.[8] It was described as "the poster child for Seattle's worn-out library system", a "crumbling 1920s-era variety store with more books than shelves to hold them".[9] A new library was funded by a "Libraries for All" bond in 1998. The building opened in 2004 and included stone from the same quarry as the downtown Central Library.[10]
In 2017, the library underwent a $696,000 renovation to increase the number of electrical outlets for digital devices and add a "laptop bar", install LED lighting, de-clutter the checkout area, and make other improvements for patrons.[6][11]
Public art
Public art installed at the library includes The Dream Ship: Beacon Hill Discovery, a kinetic sculpture atop a spire rising through a hole in the roof at the building's entrance. Other pieces include haiku carved in stones and rain scuppers shaped like ravens' beaks.[12] These and certain elements of the interior design were called "phony multiculturalism" by a critic for Seattle's The Stranger weekly newspaper.[13] Four years after the opening, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said of another Seattle library design that it "shuns architectural drama" unlike the Beacon Hill and other contemporaries.[14]
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Byrnes, Susan (October 14, 1998), "Turning a page: Seattle Proposition 1, a $196.4 million facelift, would expand and renovate the public library system", The Seattle Times, p. A1, ProQuest383645176
