🏢 The Seattle Public Library — Seattle, Washington

Queen Anne Branch

A Tudor Revival Carnegie library opened on New Year's Day 1914, its white terra-cotta arch and "LUX"-inscribed corbels making it a Seattle Landmark on the National Register.

📖 About Queen Anne Branch

The Queen Anne Branch opened on January 1, 1914, at Fourth Avenue W and W Garfield Street with an initial collection of about 5,000 volumes. It was designed by Seattle architects W. Marbury Somervell and Harlan Thomas in a late Tudor Revival style, built at a cost of roughly $32,677 funded by a Carnegie Foundation grant, with an additional $500 gift from Seattle Times publisher and Queen Anne resident Alden J. Blethen and $6,500 from the City for the land. Following one of Carnegie's preferred plans, it places a main-floor reading room over a lower-level auditorium, with a children's area in one wing and adult and teen space in the other; small corbels inscribed "LUX" (Latin for light) mark the reading rooms, and a white terra-cotta arch frames the entrance beneath stepped parapets and leaded windows. Designated a Seattle Landmark in 2003 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building underwent major restorations in 1989 and again in 2007, reopening on August 25, 2007 after an $853,523 renovation funded by the "Libraries for All" bond.

⭐ What makes this branch special

• Carnegie-funded Tudor Revival library opened January 1, 1914
• Designed by W. Marbury Somervell and Harlan Thomas; white terra-cotta entrance arch
• Seattle Landmark (2003) and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
• Reading-room corbels inscribed "LUX" (light); restored and reopened August 25, 2007

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