When I was twenty-one, I traveled across the country and found Oklahoma unlike any other terrain I had seen on the east coast. Dry roads kicked up plenty of dust. I found myself at a gas station that did double-duty as a liquor store. I thought I was in the middle of nowhere, but I was in Stroud, Oklahoma, between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Situated on the Arkansas River, and sitting at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, Tulsa is the second largest city in Oklahoma and the first place where I ate Mexican food.
I wish I could have visited one of Tulsa’s many libraries. Public library service started in the early 1900s. Tulsa’s very first library was in the basement of a courthouse. I like to think it did double-duty as shelter during tornado season. Some erstwhile librarian will have to do the fact-checking on that assumption. While Andrew Carnegie awarded a grant for $12,500 to build the original library, funds to complete the project came from private sources.
The exterior of Tulsa’s first library building was faced with Bedford Limestone quarried from Indiana. Its interior stairways and pillars were constructed from marble. Despite its original glory, within ten years the library was running out of space. By 1970, the original building was described in Tulsa’s newspapers as an “ugly old lady.” The building was soon knocked flat to pave the way for a parking lot. A new central library opened in 1965. Deemed to be of space-age design, the library’s exterior lights were turned on remotely via a U.S. communications satellite. That building underwent a massive $55-million renovation, reopening to the public in 2016, to become a Library serving the needs of its community in the Twenty-first Century.
The present incarnation of the Tulsa Library system is much more than a single Central Library building. Today’s Tulsa City-County Library actually emerged during the 1960s, but this library system has grown to encompass twenty-five branches. Among its many civic activities, The Tulsa City-County Library bestows multiple prestigious literary awards to authors, including the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, the Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Readers' Literature,
The key to understanding people and the world around us begins with education. One way to learn about the world is by developing a love of books. Each month, we profile a library. Large, small, urban, rural, post-modern, quaint or neo-classic; do you have a library that you love? Tell us about it. This month, Patricia Vaccarino writes about the Tulsa City-County Library system in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tulsa Central Library
Libraries We Love:
The Tulsa City-County Library system |
Honoring the Twenty-first Century
By Patricia Vaccarino
Tulsa Central Library Interior