(Photo – Melissa Michelson)
Pasadena Heritage suggests that Pasadena City College Trustees look first at renovation and retrofit options.
By News Desk
On April 9, 2024, Pasadena Heritage sent a letter of concern to the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees about their plans to demolish PCC’s original library and attached Harbeson Hall.
In the letter, Pasadena Heritage hoped they will “revise the plan in a more sustainable, financially prudent, and preservation sensitive way. ”
“Harbeson Library […] was designed by local architectural firm Bennett and Bennett and was completed in 1949 in the Moderne style. The PCC 75th Anniversary book speaks about the importance of the L building:
PCC was one of the first two year colleges to have a separate library building. This opened on October 30, 1949, with two large reading rooms, an entry hall, a room for listening to phonograph records, and a movie previewing room. Several offices surrounded the stacks, which had a capacity for 100,000 books. An auditorium, Harbeson Hall, was attached to the north side of the building. It was the scene of countless campus functions from faculty meetings to student dances. By 1971, the library collection had grown too full.
“We know that PCC has underscored their commitment to sustainability, but stress that the most sustainable form of architecture is through adaptive reuse and preservation. The building is a stately, reinforced concrete structure, that may need only minimal retrofitting – it does not need to be torn down.”
“We ask that the Board look first at renovation and retrofit options for each structure as opposed to replacement. We hope the Strategic Plan can be updated to include more sustainable reuse strategies.”
At the April 10, 2024 meeting, Vice President Candace Jones told the Board of Trustees that the L, W, and V buildings would potentially be demolished and rebuilt.
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