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The Seattle Public Library's Central Library is the flagship library of The Seattle Public Library system. The 11-story (185 feet or 56 meters high) glass and steel building in downtown Seattle, Washington was opened to the public on Sunday, May 23, 2004. Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of OMA/LMN were the principal architects, Magnusson Klemencic Associates was the structural engineer with Arup; Arup also provided mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering, as well as, fire/life safety, security, IT and communications, and audio visual consulting; and Hoffman Construction Company of Portland, Oregon, was the general contractor. The public library can hold about 1.45 million books and other materials, features underground public parking for 143 vehicles, and includes over 400 computers open to the public. Over 2 million individuals visited the new library in its first year. It is the third Seattle Central Library building to be located on the same site at 1000 Fourth Avenue, the block bounded by Fourth and Fifth Avenues and Madison and Spring Streets. The library has a unique, striking appearance, consisting of several discrete "floating platforms" seemingly wrapped in a large steel net around glass skin. Architectural tours of the building began in June 2004. In 2007, the building was voted #108 on the American Institute of Architects' list of Americans' 150 favorite structures in the US. It was one of two Seattle buildings included on the list of 150 structures, the other being Safeco Field. ==History== There has been a library located in downtown Seattle as far back as 1891; however, the library did not have its own dedicated facilities and it was frequently on the move from building to building. The Seattle Carnegie Library, the first permanent library located in its own dedicated building at Fourth Avenue and Madison Street, opened in 1906 with a Beaux-Arts design by Peter J. Weber. Andrew Carnegie, whose patronage of libraries later included five others in Seattle, donated $200,000 for the construction of the new library. That library, at , with an extension built in 1946, eventually became too small and cramped for a city population that, by the time the library was replaced, had roughly doubled since the library's first opening. A second library, at five stories and , was built at the site of the old Carnegie library in 1960. The new building designed by architects Bindon and Wright, with Decker, Christenson, and Kitchin as associates, featured an international-style architecture and an expanded interior, with features such as drive-thru service to offset the lack of available parking. George Tsutakawa's "Fountain of Wisdom" on the Fifth Avenue side (relocated to Fourth Avenue in the current library) was the first of that artist's many sculptural fountains. A remodeling finished in 1972 gave the public access to the fourth story, dedicated to the arts and sound recordings. By the late 1990s, the library became too cramped again and two-thirds of its materials were held in storage areas inaccessible to patrons. Renewed consciousness of regional earthquake dangers drew concern from public officials about the seismic risks inherent to the building's design.〔(Proposal for the Central Library, 1998 Libraries for All capital plan. ) Seattle Public Library. March 13, 1998. Retrieved May 26, 2006〕〔Victor Steinbrueck, ''Seattle Cityscape'', University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1962, p. 71.〕 Image:Seattle - Collins Block 01.jpg|The Collins Block at Second and James; the public library was one of its original 1894 tenants. Image:Seattle Public Library - 1900.jpg|Henry Yesler's former mansion at Third and James was supposed to be a permanent home for the library, but burned January 2, 1901. Image:Seattle - Carnegie Library 01.jpg|The Carnegie Library, on the same site as the current building, was Seattle's downtown library for nearly 60 years. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seattle Central Library」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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