Vintage furniture sale helps librarys renovation efforts Glendale Central Library parts with furniture and fixtures to prepare for remodeling. The Friends of the Glendale Library held a furniture and furnishings sale at the Central Library in Glendale on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014. The items are from the library and other Glendale libraries and are being sold to make room for extensive renovations at the main library. By Alicia Banks, alicia.banks@latimes November 23, 2014 | 10:00 a.m. Hundreds of people trickled into the Glendale Central Library throughout Saturday not to just read, but to spruce up their homes with furniture and fixtures on sale. The library put midcentury and vintage couches, chairs, tables and a handful of wooden library card-catalog cabinets on the market for browsing shoppers. Money from items sold will go toward purchasing new furniture as the library prepares for an extensive renovation project in June. Earlier this year, the city allocated $5.1 million to help cover the planned $15 million needed to remodel the library. The Brand Library hosted a similar furniture sale before undergoing a two-year renovation. It reopened this past March. Before the sale started at 8:30 a.m. inside the library’s auditorium, roughly 25 shoppers waited eagerly for the doors to open. More than 150 shoppers had made their way through the auditorium by 11 a.m., snagging lamps, posters and worn chairs. Carolyn Flemming, facilities and building project administrator at the Glendale Central Library, said the sale was not just about furnishings. “It’s a link to the library’s past, and there’s an enjoyment in recycling,” she said. “There’s an appreciation for vintage furniture.” Among the items up for sale were portraits, such as one of 18th-century astronomer William Herschel and a famous Time magazine photo of a gorilla named KoKo holding a kitten. Shoppers wiggled into chairs, tapping the arms, testing the comfort after decades of use. Atomic sconce lamps, a coffee table and kitten posters caught the eye of Mariam Gukasyan and her husband, Aleksey Sirotin. The Glendale pair already come to the library every weekend to read, so Saturday’s trip was not out of the ordinary. “This is really cool. They don’t do these often,” Gukasyan said. “The range of selection is great. Everything in here is good quality.” On the opposite side of the auditorium stood Brent Huss of Pasadena. His eyes scanned dozens of old maps, some dating back to the 1940s, outlining portions of California’s coast. Huss lost count of the maps — showing Santa Barbara, Big Sur and even Potato Harbor — he amassed to purchase by noon. Huss tossed around ideas of what to do with the maps, physical representations of his interest: the California Coast. “If I’m going to a certain place, I want to see what it looked like before,” Huss said, grinning. “This is the best $5 I’ve ever spent.” For more information, contact the library at (818) 548-2020.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 01:35:06 +0000
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