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Presidio Branch Library was established in 1898 as the sixth
branch in the San Francisco Public Library system. The Branch
was opened at its current site in 1921. The Italian-Renaissance
building was built with $83,228 in Carnegie funds and designed
by G. Albert Landsburgh, who designed three other branch libraries
- Mission, Chinatown and Sunset - as well as the Golden Gate
Theatre and the Warfield Theatre. John McLaren, famed superintendent
of Golden Gate Park, designed the original landscaping for Presidio’s
picturesque site.
The Abortion: an historical romance by Richard Brautigan describes
very carefully some of the wonderful features of the Presidio Branch
library. His fictionalized library, however, is open 24 hours and is a
repository for unpublished manuscripts. The librarian-protagonist of
the novel lives in the library and gets a break from time-to-time from
a friend who travels from a book cave in Northern California down to
San Francisco.
Brautigan wrote:
“This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly, lush and American...
This library came into being because of an overwhelming need and desire
for such a place. There just simply had to be a library like this. That
desire brought into existence this library building which isn’t very
large and its permanent staffing which happens to be myself at the
present.
The library is old in the San Francisco post-earthquake yellow-brick
style and is located at 3150 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, California
94115...
This library rests upon a sloping lot that runs all the way through the
block down from Clay to Sacramento Street. We use just a small portion of
the lot and the rest of it is overgrown with tall grass and bushes and
flowers and wine bottles and lovers’ trysts.
There are some old cement stairs that pour through green and busy
establishments down from the Clay Street side and there are ancient electric
lamps, Friends of Thomas Edison, mounted on tall metal asparagus stalks.
They are on what was once the second landing of the stairs. The back of the
library lies almost disappearing in green at the bottom of the stairs.
There are high arched windows here in the library above the bookshelves and
there are two green trees towering into the windows and they spread their
branches like paste against the glass.
I love those trees."
from Richard Brautigan, The Abortion: an historical romance. 1970.
Over the years, the branch building has housed other San Francisco Public
Library services including the Communication Center; the Library for the
Blind and Print-Handicapped; and the Performing Arts Library. It is now it
is a full-service branch library with meeting rooms for library programs
and, upon application, public use.
An interior view of the Presidio Branch in 1970, the same year as Richard Brautigan's The Abortion was published.
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