Cahuenga Branch

About this property

Cahuenga Branch is the third oldest branch library facility in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Located at 4591 Santa Monica Boulevard in the East Hollywood section of Los Angeles, it was built in 1916 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. One of three surviving Carnegie libraries in Los Angeles, it has been designated as a Historic-Cultural Monument and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Cahuenga Branch was built brick and concrete and designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The building features a low-pitched overhanging hip roof made of clay tiles, a tawny-colored tapestry-designed brick facade, and a high basement. The front is symmetrical and is dominated by a large, formal entranceway featuring a double stairway with matching volutes that connect the sidewalk to a veranda with balustrade outside the entrance to the building. Cahuenga Branch was built in a clover leaf or butterfly pattern allowing the entire floor to be supervised from the center. When built, the building included a children's department, fiction section, reference room, adult reading room, open air reading room, overflow reading room, and a basement with an auditorium that sat 300. Caheunga Branch was built in 1916, cost $34,000 ($1.01 million in 2025) to construct, and was the last of six branch libraries built with a $210,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. The architect was Clarence H. Russell, who also associated with Norman F. Marsh in building the canals in Venice, Los Angeles. Though this building and equipment were paid for through the Carnegie grant, the land itself was purchased by the city, the cost paid through an assessment district. It opened on December 4, 1916. Carnegie Branch was originally planned for the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, but land at nearby Santa Monica and Madison was less expensive. Even so, the branch was situated amongst many educational, cultural and medical institutions: UCLA's original campus was located nearby and after it moved, its old campus was occupied by what became Los Angeles City College. Also within one mile (1.6 km) of the branch are the Braille Institute, Barnsdall Art Park (site of Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House), KCET's public television station, Children's Hospital, and Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. The branches proximity to these centers led to great demand for its resources. During World War I, Cahuenga Branch and other libraries were used for war-related activities. At the same time, more than one hundred people regularly attended singing events at the library; the 1918 flu epidemic, however, put an end to such gatherings.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Los Angeles County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Los Angeles County.

More historic places in California

Browse all historic places in California.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

California history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.