LOOKING BACK

Young Chang

Believe it or not, the Ebell Club is why Newport Beach has a central

library today.

In 1909, when the club was formed, one its early goals was to get its

hands on a traveling collection of books from the State Library. The

books were made available to the community to read for only three hours a

week at the Ebell Club’s meeting place.

But that small collection started the seeds of a library. The number

of books available grew to 300 within a few years.

If you consider this the start of Newport Beach’s library, then its

history dates back almost 90 years. But if you need an official city

ordinance to mark the library’s start, the Newport Beach City Council

passed one n 1920 establishing a free public library.

The Women’s Civic League pushed for this move. In the same year, a

board of library trustees was created. There were five members. The

library celebrated its official 80th anniversary last year and brought a

cake to a City Council meeting.

“The library’s mission is to be the cultural, educational and

informational heart of the city,” said Patrick Bartolic, presiding chair

of the Newport Beach Public Library Board of Trustees. “I think they

fairly well achieved national status and recognition doing that.”

In 1929, a new City Library was built in East Newport Park on Balboa

Boulevard.

In 1947, a small station of the library opened in Corona del Mar. The

Friends of the Library became incorporated in 1957, and in 1959, an

official Corona del Mar branch opened on Marigold Avenue.

Four years later, the Mariners Branch Library opened and in 1980, the

Newport Center Branch Library on San Clemente Avenue started.

Today, the Orange County Museum of Art’s educational and

administrative offices operate out of this site.

But library volunteers still felt the need for a central library, said

city librarian LaDonna Kienitz.

“You need to have a central site for some of the less used materials,”

she said. “You need to have a basis for reference service, otherwise you

would be duplicating them at every branch you had.”

And in 1994, with $2 million raised for the project, the $10 million

Central Library on Avocado Avenue was built. Last year, the American

Library Assn. ranked it the country’s 3rd best community library out of

more than 9,000 considered.

“The library is excellent, but it’s really due to the hundreds of

volunteers in the city that have worked to make it that way,” Kienitz

said.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical

Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;

e-mail at young.chang@latimes.com; or mail her at c/o Daily Pilot, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.