Seattle Public Library-Greenwood Branch

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The crop of library buildings which were built with recent bond issue funds universally share some of the biggest problems I’ve seen in public architecture in my life. None of them are really usable, but of all of them only the new Central Library is worse than the Greenwood Branch. The new libraries in this town break every rule of the Bauhaus. I’ve come to firmly believe that we need a law forcing bureaucrats to contract American firms (if not local ones) to design any building being constructed for public use with public funds. European architects, while trendy, are clueless. At this location, parking is still at a premium even though they have “expanded” the parking by creating an underground garage, and the spaces they have created are difficult to get into and out of. The elevator to the underground garage seems to be perpetually broken, so you have to walk around the outside of the building to the front, which is so much fun in Seattle’s weather. The computers at all the Seattle Libraries have several problems, starting with the version of flash player which they have loaded. I have found some websites won’t reload, while others cause all my internet windows to close without warning. Some email sites, including Yahoo, won’t load properly, either, so you can’t delete messages or move them to other folders. These same sites all work fine on computers at the King County Library computers, so this is just a case of bad IT on the part of the Seattle system. If you can get to the KCLS, do. BTW, yes, I am a Seattle resident, so my tax dollars are supporting this joke.