Postscript : Library Draws Readers, Also Some Viewers

The San Juan Capistrano Library seems to have something for everyone.

Its symmetrical beauty, reflected in turreted corners and columned corridors that accentuate light and shadow, attracts students of architecture from all over the world.

Its numerous secluded niches and intimate carrels draw book lovers from all over the county who forsake libraries closer to home for its coziness.

And the building’s “fairy castle� look excites children, who are eager to explore every hidden corner and perhaps, in the process, even pick up a book or two.

The library’s greatest success, beyond all the critical praise it has received for its striking Spanish-style architecture and its sensitive conformity to its historical surroundings, seems to be the unusually large number of visitors, fans of books and buildings alike, who are drawn not only by the knowledge the library holds but by the building itself.

The $1.8-million Spanish Colonial structure was designed by the prominent but controversial architect Michael Graves and officially opened in December, 1983. Last year, more than 1,900 people toured the one-story library, not counting patrons who came to use its extensive California and Orange County history collection.

The library is definitely giving the city’s other, more traditional, tourist attraction, the famed mission, a run for its money.

“It’s been described as a fairy tale of a library,� said Orange County librarian Elizabeth Martinez Smith. “Even if people don’t respond positively to the architecture, once they walk into the library, they change their minds.�

The library has issued 12,000 library cards, an unusually high number for a 48,000-volume library in a city with a population of 20,000. Residents of many other cities in Orange County who have heard about the library come to see it and end up registering for a card there, Smith said.

Since the building’s opening, branch librarian Jackson said, staff members have counted visitors from more than 25 countries, in cluding New Zealand, Israel, India, Ecuador, Germany and Ghana.

Architects from Belgium, France and Australia have come to study the library’s outdoor reading areas, enclosed by trellises and covered with bougainvillea and trumpet vine, its raised ceilings latticed with wood beams or lit by skylights, or to view the subtle samples of Spanish, Egyptian, Greek and Mayan architecture that influence the building, Jackson said.

But beyond the beauty of the building that is especially savored by students of architecture, the library’s intimacy is what draws bibliophiles, who like to curl up with a good book in one of the inviting niches or in a deep chair in front of the fireplace, Jackson said.

“It offers lots of little private places, and private places in public buildings are really rare,� Jackson said.

“You have the feeling when you walk in that it’s a wonderful place to love a book,� said Mollie Burke, a resident of Dana Point and self-described “heavy� library user. “I love all of it.�