Photo post: Sunnyvale library

[weofodthignen]

Sunnyvale is a small city that sprouted a lot of housing in the postwar development of the California suburbs, and then both new industry and more housing when it found itself in the middle of Silicon Valley. In the second half of the 1970s, the city decided to bulldoze most of its downtown and build an enclosed mall. That included City Hall, a small Spanish Colonial-style building surrounded by redwood and cedar trees that residents had donated/stealth planted. The new city hall was post-and-beam with a red-brick veneer, with a fireplace in the main hall and lots of wings with peaked roofs and ending in pretty windows, in a park setting. The parking lot was laid out with pink oleander bushes and flowering cherry trees along the median strips. When the city outgrew the building, it became the library, with a new city hall across a winding road through what had become a government campus, including the public safety building (unified police and fire service) and a courthouse. The third city hall was much more private, like the public safety building, and had more flowers and colorful shrubs and fewer big trees around it, but the same architect put them all up; the ensemble is the only Sunnyvale entry in the Bay Area AIA guide. At some point a warren of single-story timber office buildings with covered boardwalks were added, housing overflow from the continuously expanding city bureaucracy as well as some businesses and, after its own building was sold to a private pre-school, the regional branch of the state unemployment and retraining office. These were once a hive of activity but had become so dilapidated by the 2000s that the state condemned them.

In the 2010s, with considerable nudging from the city, the residents voted to demolish the whole shebang and replace it all with new buildings in a new layout. Even the trees will get the chop, and I believe the accepted plan slightly moves the road (which has two useful bus stops) and turns it into a pedestrian path.

Demolition has started on city hall, so I took some photos of the library (previous city hall) while it's still standing.




As that first picture suggests, it's so surrounded by trees, it's possible to miss it. Redwoods, other conifers, and a few oaks.










The main entrance, with a sculpture of a boy sitting on a bench reading and eating a hamburger. Pre-pandemic, there would have been JoHos pushing their tracts from the bench on the left, and people sitting at round iron tables with parasols, working on laptops or in one guy's case, playing the flute.




Gable-ends with nice windows:







That last one (originally the main council chamber?) has an attractive stained-glass picture of a river winding through a landscape that somebody donated; I'm not sure whether they are going to save it.


The side of the building, and the lawn, now show neglect.






The wooden office buildings are on the other side of the lawn; they cover a lot of ground, enclosing three interior courtyards, but have been mostly abandoned for years.






Here's where they sprawl out past the end of the library; that patio with wooden picnic tables used to be a busy lunch spot. The bench is part of the park around the library.




During the pandemic or the demolition, metal picnic tables have been put out under a group of oaks on a knoll near the library entrance.

Comments

Bummer...

[ravan]

I'm actually sad that they'll cut down those beautiful tress. he wooden building look like hastily put up temp school buildings, and sould go, but tearing down the brick building when all the need is a new roof? What a waste.

Re: Bummer...

[weofodthignen]

Yup. They were bound and determined to make a new library with more storage for Friends of the Library books(!) and walls that wouldn't block WiFi so efficiently.

[elainegrey]

So disappointing. I enjoyed that library the few times i visited, particularly the trees around it.

[weofodthignen]

They really were determined. They caved on their refusal to set up a branch in North Sunnyvale, and the Charles Street Gardens allotments were saved. But in exchange only proposals that destroyed the whole campus were allowed to be voted on.