The site is an oasis of mature trees fronting a noisy roadway. It merges at the rear with a residential neighborhood. The new library replaces a 1960's structure built with brick walls and a concrete shell roof. The severe impacts of requisite seismic strengthening and mechanical system upgrades indicated that the building could not be saved in recognizable form. The new building is two stories tall and twice the area of the earlier library. Neighborhood meetings mandated maximizing parking in f...