The Brief

There’s something about a library that’s inherently beautiful. Maybe it’s the silence or the history of the building. Maybe it's the idea of books being shared among countless readers.

Some of the most gorgeous libraries are reflections of their respective communities. Whether it’s seeing a mosaic from a local artist, or standing in awe simply from the architecture itself, these libraries hold countless stories and we become part of them whenever we walk through their doors.

The libraries listed here are just a small sample of SoCal’s offerings. Need a green space to unwind with your latest fiction read? Does being surrounded by art and color help ease the drudgery of a study session? Remote work with an ocean view?

We hope there’s something on this list for you.

East Los Angeles Library

• 4837 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles

West entrance of the East Los Angeles Library

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From its brightly-colored cylindrical towers to the mosaics that adorn the building’s entrance, the East Los Angeles Library is a tribute to Mayan designs, with a particular reference to their astronomical observatories.

Enter from the west — or parking lot — side, the red tower stands in for the sun. Above that entrance, visitors are greeted with a stunning mosaic mural by artist José Antonio Aguirre, carved out of limestone and comprised of Byzantine and Venetian glass. This exterior panel of the four-part mural shows an open book amid a sea of geometric shapes and images.

A view of the East Los Angeles Library’s east entrance adjacent to Belvedere Park Lake.

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Enter from the east or lakeside (yes, there’s a lake just steps away), the blue tower representing the moon.

East Tower, Mosaic Cycle Mural, “Our Legacy, Forever Presente”, “Arrival” movement by José Antonio Aguirre.

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The vast scope of Aguirre’s 2,000-foot-plus work unfolds as you continue your entry, and features prominent East L.A. figures such as Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Edward James Olmos and the late former First District County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who commissioned the artwork.

East Los Angeles Library interior featuring Mosaic Cycle Mural, “Our Legacy, Forever Presente”, “Departure” movement by José Antonio Aguirre.

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Outside, the library is surrounded by Belvedere Park — approximately 30 acres of greenspace and a recreation center. If you decide to take a stroll around the nearby lake, you’ll find ducks swimming and see artist Rude Calderón’s “Leaping Fish, Nature's Cycles” water features–two sculptures of fish, one leaping out of the water, and one diving back in.

A view of Belvedere Park Lake outside of the East Los Angeles Library.

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Billie Jean King Main Library

• 200 W. Broadway, Long Beach

Billie Jean King Main Library exterior on Broadway in Long Beach.

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The Billie Jean King Main Library in Downtown Long Beach is a study in modern architecture. From Broadway, this building looks like row after row of glass panes, white window frames and caramel-toned wood.

The structure was designed with sustainability in mind, and is made up of renewable timber that’s been reinforced where needed with steel and concrete.

The central atrium of the Billie Jean King Main Library.

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The focal point of the building is its central atrium, a large, open space on the first floor with light pouring in from all sides. This room can be used for events, workshops or exhibits, including an exhibition showcasing work from the city’s Professional Artist Fellowship, a grant program that honors living Long Beach artists who have affected local communities.

From left to right “Ethereal Queen” and “Unbreakable Spirit” by artist Stephanie Rozzo is displayed in the atrium of the Billie Jean King Main Library.

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Grab a desk overlooking the first floor to get another perspective of the expansive, light-filled interior space. Or catch a window seat with a view of Lincoln Park on Pacific Avenue.

View from the Billie Jean King Main Library overlooking Lincoln Park in Long Beach.

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Manhattan Beach Library

• 1320 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach

A view of 14th street through the “Light Gate” sculpture by artists Mags Harries and Lajos Héder.

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The Manhattan Beach Library is a perfect example of how wonderfully spoiled we are by the weather here in SoCal. This two-story, 21,500-square-foot building on Highland Avenue offers panoramic views of the sun and the ocean of this beach city for all who enter.

View from the second story of the Manhattan Beach Library.

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The theme of ocean living is evident throughout, like an eye-catching sea kelp sculpture with 10-foot tall leaves that hugs the ramp to the library’s stairwell.

The sculpture consists of multiple elongated, organic forms arranged in a flowing, wave-like pattern across the surface.

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“Personal Archaeology” installation by Kathy Taslitz near the stairwell of the Manhattan Beach Library

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Or the row of jellyfish floating overhead when you climb the stairs.

“Prevailing Affinities” installation by Kathy Taslitz near the stairwell of the Manhattan Beach Library.

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Cerritos Library

• 18025 Bloomfield Ave., Cerritos

Exterior of the Cerritos Library.

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From its golden titanium exterior to the T-Rex fossil replica inside, the Cerritos Library offers its patrons an experience to remember with every visit. In fact, it was designed to be the first "Experience Library," with themed spaces like an “Old World” collegiate-style reading room, or its 15,000-gallon saltwater aquarium, which faces the entrance.

A view of the Cerritos Library’s 15,000 gallon aquarium, shot from the library’s children’s area.

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Like the rest of the libraries on this list, Cerritos regularly displays work from local artists. Its latest exhibition features Patrice Monteiro, who uses a technique called paper quilling, where strips of paper are placed together to create each piece. The exhibit will be on display until Dec. 30.

“Joy is a Revolution” by Patrice Monteiro, inspired by Nettie Beatrice’s digital art, on display in the Cerritos Library through December 2025.

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Perhaps the biggest draw to this library is its children’s area. Step through the passage of giant story books and you’re in an enchanted world that includes a rainforest tree, a space shuttle, a lighthouse and the aforementioned 40-foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton replica named Stan.

The Cerritos Library’s children’s area features a lighthouse, rainforest tree and 40-foot long Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil replicas.

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It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”