by June McKivor

We’re moving again! The White Center Library is moving to its new building on 107th and 14th SW. As we celebrate the opening of our new library, we in the Library Guild have also been thinking about its past, about how it began in the basement of a private home and 70+ years later became a beautiful centerpiece of pride for the community. Unfortunately, we have found little in the way of well documented information or photographs or anecdotes to help us fill in the details in the history of the White Center Library.

Here’s what we know. In the 1920s, before White Center had a library, folks had to go into Seattle to a branch of the Seattle Public library located on the corner of 16th and Barton. At that time borrowers had to pay a fee and were limited to check out six books per week. When Seattle closed that branch library in 1930, Nel Freeze and members of the Mt. View School PTA recognized the need for our community to have its own library. Looking to the future and seeing the benefits of a library for the children of nearby Mt. View Elementary, the group insisted that yes, there would be a neighborhood library for the people of White Center. They began by collecting donated books. In 1943 Freeze opened her home to students of Mt. View School and the people of White Center, and for three years the community had their own little library thanks to volunteers, PTA helpers, and the basement location. When the collection outgrew the basement, the group realized that they needed a larger site and easier access for the public.

Times were tough back then. Dads had gone off to war, and moms, working like Rosie the Riveter, were doing military jobs, as well. It was said that kids were often left on their own to get into trouble. Richard Hugo, poet, writer and White Center native remarked, “People came to White Center from miles around to have a good time and a good time often involved a good brawl. When I was fourteen I would go to the roller rink, not to skate but to wait for a fight to start". Through its growing pains White Center struggled and grew, establishing a sewer district, a chamber of commerce, the White Center Boys’ Club, The Salvation Army Red Shield Youth Center, and in July, 1946, the community had a new public library located in a 10.5 by 49 foot room under the front porch of the White Center Field House. It was also the year our library became a part of the King County Library System and hired its first librarian, Agatha Sullivan.

By 1952 the field house library had outgrown its space, and thus a group of interested community people formed the White Center Library Guild in order to raise money for a new building. Along with Lela Pinson, the Guild’s first president, Freeze and Sullivan, active Guild members Gertrude Finney, Linnie Broderson, Josephine Coddington, Genevieve Culler, Margaret Kallio, Venus Pfafman and Loretta Pettit set out to fund not only a new library building, but to pay for the library’s continuing care and maintenance. In those days the community was responsible for the utilities, supplies, cleaning and upkeep - everything but books and librarians. The group sold license tabs, collected scrap metal, held raffles, canvassed the community’s businesses and residents and, it was said, “used every conceivable method” to raise money for the library.

In 1961 they bought the former Warren Avenue gymnasium, which had become available due to the Century 21 World’s Fair construction, and then community activists Omar Schau (White’ Center’s Man of the Year for his civic works) and Norm Ackley arranged to have the first White Center library building put on a barge and hauled to its new site at 1205 SW 102nd. Two Guild members spray painted the exterior of the building, twice during its useful lifetime, and Guild members voluntarily cleaned the interior to keep janitorial service costs down.

By the 1960s the gym library had also outgrown its confines and finally a new brick building became the dream and then a part of the Forward Thrust Bond Issue of 1968. Site of hundreds of programs and activities for children and adults, this library building has been an excellent source of information, a meeting place for the community and our friend since it opened in 1976.

By the turn of the century, the requirements of a growing community and a new age of technology created a need for more space and yet another move to a larger venue. In 2004, the plan for the new library became a part of the county’s Replacement Bond Measure. This time the Library Guild went out into the community and asked them to support this measure and vote for the funds to bring a larger, modern library to White Center. The voters said, YES.

Still our neighborhood faced the possibility that our new library would be built outside the White Center core district and would be out of the way for most students on foot and for bus riders, as well. Thus, led by Guild President, Rachael Levine, library supporters and patrons began a petition drive to make sure that the promise to build their new library in White Center, near schools and on the bus line, was kept. Thousands of library supporters said YES again and the new library is today a reality.

The history of this library seems to be about a community that has fought for it since 1943. It would be great to know more about the people who were so dedicated and determined to build a library, and especially those early founders and patrons who used and supported their library.

The future of the library depends on the next generation of library supporters who will make sure that our library will always be there to serve the people of White Center. Opening Day is May 21st. Come on over. Check out the new library and sign up to join and support the White Center Library Guild..