Los Angeles Public Library, West Facade

This side faces Flower St. The reliefs and figures are by Lee Lawrie. The following is a description from the "Hand Book of the Central Building Los Angeles Public Library", published in 1927, p. 20: "Emblematically the west entrance is one of the most significant, for here the image of light is given its fullest symbolism below the central tower. The inscription is the Latin of Lucretius, "Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt," taken from a famous passage: Races of men increase and races fade/And in brief space tribes fare their mortal way/Like runners passing on the lamp of life. The idea is that of the ancient torch race, the flame of knowledge passed from people to people through successive ages, and it may have been suggested to the Roman poet by the passage at the beginning of Plato's Republic, where the Greek philosopher uses the like image. The symbolic torch race gives the subject for the relief panel on this front and it is peculiarly in keeping with the great images of the Morning and Evening Stars, Phosphor and Hesper, which rise above this panel, for there is little question but that in the dawn of the torch race was a ritual of the rising and the setting of the heavenly luminaries. Phosphor and Hesper here are taken also as symbolizing the East and the West, with the light of wisdom carried forward in succession by the great thinkers of each world who have taken up the torch in the age-long course."

To: Public Art in the Los Angeles Public Library and the Maguire Gardens