#TBT You Won't Believe What The Kalamazoo Library Looked Like

The Kalamazoo Public Library has been a perennial award winner. It's a great resource for when you need to find something out. And the building's exterior design is quite modern, almost futuristic. But a Throwback Thursday tweet by the Library surprised me with how the previous library on the same site looked.

It seems the current building was built after a bond issue was passed in 1955. And then a lot of space for expansion was picked up when the Kalamazoo Public Museum moved out to its own facilities north on Rose Street.

So much here to digest. In the black and white photo from 1939, the building looks like something from an Ivy League campus in the East. Is the Harvard, Yale or Kalamazoo?

And that darling display case right on the southeast corner of South and Rose Streets, that thing was pretty high tech by what the description says: " heated to keep the books at room temperature and included state-of-the-art lighting technology at the time: fluorescent bulbs!"

It's funny how lighting technology has gone full circle. Florescent bulbs (with its ballasts) was state of the art, but we came to think of it as being good in office situations due to its harsher look. Now, we've changed our thinking and it appears warmer lighting is in now, and LED's are certainly quieter.

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If you could look further east down South Street, you might also wonder what the architecture looked like 80 years ago. Adjacent to the library building is a building that now appears to be condominiums and was a charter school for a few years. Of course, to an entire generation that adjacent building was Bourbon Street. My, have times changed.

(Kalamazoo Public Library via YouTube)