In its immensity and comprehensiveness, North York Central Library (1987) was a universe unto itself. Located in the mall next to Mel Lastman Square, I was blown away by the sheer size, complexity, and scope of this branch. In fact, I felt so overwhelmed by the task of adequately describing all 168,022 square feet of it, I decided to write one post per floor, beginning with the sixth floor and working my way down.
The top floor, also known as the Gladys Allison Canadiana Room, was smaller than the preceding levels, creating an aeyrie-like effect. I leaned against a waist-high carpeted wall overlooking the atrium below and studied a sky mural on the west wall at eye level. The mural’s sky was very Northern, pressing down on mountains of ice. A wooden disk with a carved maple leaf echoed the Canadiana theme.
The lofty Canadiana Room seemed to represent the firmament of North York Central, but the sky mural wasn’t its absolute limit. A milky-purple galaxy alive with stars glimmered further overhead. I caught my breath when I casually looked up, for I hadn’t been expecting to see anything more infinite than the sky! My excitability was also heightened by the minor vertigo I was experiencing from my bird’s-eye perch. It made me appreciate the solidness of the structure I was leaning against; the sturdy upholstered wall minimized the sense of floating in the wide openness of the atrium.
Dividing North York Central branch into its east and west sides, the central atrium was like a canyon. From my east-side perspective in the Canadiana room, I could see over the atrium and the open staircases on both sides. From so high up, the vastness of this urban beehive of information and human endeavor was tangible. Reduced-sized patrons scurried about their scholarly business on multiple floors. A lone man worked at his laptop in the northwest observation tower of the fourth floor. A chatty person was squatted down against the carpeted ledge of another tower to answer a cell-phone summons. And on the first floor of the west side, a round table with radial dividers looked like a package of cheese wedges with miniature lactose-tolerant readers in attendance.
As I gazed further, the scene below began to bear resemblance to a massive 1980′s pinball machine. For example, the round observation circles at the edges of the east floors looked like a series of obstacles for a pinball to ricochet around. A thick red column vertically intersected all the circles from the fifth to the first floors, reinforcing the pinball effect. Even the staircase on the west side resembled a chute with a round basin at the end (rather like those old-fashioned cash registers that spit out change into a shallow bowl). The library could also be described as a giant charity coin contraption like the ones you see in Dairy Queen or Blockbuster. You drop in a donated quarter and watch it spin its way down a complicated series of chutes, drops, and channels.
When I started to wonder if any mountaineers had ever rappelled from the fifth floor to the lobby, I figured it was time to get moving. I stepped away from the hypnotic view and walked around the darkened microfilm room on the north side of the sixth floor, where the low lighting suited the pursuit of past mysteries. This research area featured glossy scanners next to large black computer screens. Genealogical microfilms and old newspapers waited patiently in cabinets.
The remaining section of this floor received extra light from the south-facing windows that overlooked Mel Lastman Square’s central pool far below. On a nearby wall was a portrait of Gladys Allison (1901-1979), who served on the North York Library Board from 1951 to 1967. Artist Mayc Setchell depicted a sympathetic bespectacled woman with short silver hair set in gentle waves. A seated Gladys and her manual typewriter were positioned in front of bookshelves which filled the entire background of the canvas. The majority of the books’ spines were blank, but Setchell chose to provide some titles, including Tomorrow Will Be Better, Lorna Doon, Miracle of the Breakfast Table, Short History of the English People, and The Works of Shakespeare.
Not far from Gladys’ painting was a life-size gilded oak lion with a pompadour mane and slightly protruding eyes. According to the display information, The Golden Lion of North York was made by Paul Sheppard, and it used to stand guard over the entrance to a nineteenth-century hotel near Sheppard and Yonge (naturally enough, The Golden Lion Hotel).
Paying my respects to the lion and the North York History Collection, I stepped into the elevator and pressed 5, Science and Technology.