Portlanders have treated the building in front of you as a civic temple since it opened in 1913. The Multnomah County Central Library was designed by A.E. Doyle in the Georgian Revival style, with a grand staircase, vaulted reading rooms, and a beveled glass skylight that fills the interior with natural light on the rare clear Portland day. The library serves the highest per-capita circulation of any library system in the United States — Portlanders check out more books per person than residents of any other major American city.
The collection includes more than two million items. The building was renovated in the 1990s with a campaign that raised significant funds through public donation, with Portlanders buying individual bricks and contributing to a restoration that was as much a statement of civic identity as a preservation project. The Beverly Cleary Children's Library on the ground floor honors Portland's most famous children's book author, who set her Ramona Quimby series in a fictionalized version of Northeast Portland neighborhoods.
The Henry Failing Art Library on an upper floor holds one of the finest art reference collections in the Pacific Northwest. This building is the architectural argument that public libraries are not services but monuments.