Los Angeles Central Library celebrates 100 years, opens 1925-time capsule

The Los Angeles Central Library kicked off its yearlong 100th anniversary celebration on Thursday, unveiling the contents of a recently recovered century-old time capsule.

Dedicated in 1926, the downtown building is a designated Los Angeles Cultural Monument, and buried within its wall was a copper-boxed time capsule.

On May 3, 1925, the Central Library cornerstone was laid on 5th Street, with the time capsule inside. Todd Lerew, Director of Special Projects, The Library Foundation, took on the task to unearth the capsule in time for the 100th anniversary.  

"It took us just about a year to figure out logistically how we were going to extract the time capsule," Lerew said in a video screened at Thursday's event.  He said only photographs from 1925 pointed to a capsule buried within the walls, as there were no instructions or plans on how to retrieve it.

He explained the tedious process to get to the box behind the wall in what's now the men's restroom:  drilling holes, running a borescope camera, hammering through terra cotta blocks and concrete – until they found it. A custom-made copper box, soldered on all sides.

"The box itself is an artifact. It's an amazing thing, and whatever it contains will be valuable institutional history, if not something more indicative of life in Los Angeles," Lerew said in a video.

Inside was a scrapbook, "Homes of the Los Angeles Public Library," which included photos of significant downtown buildings. A typed list of every library employee, including stenographers and janitors, along with City Librarian Everett R. Perry, was inside, as well as the design story, told by the architects of the building.

Another smaller copper box was inside the capsule, holding the cornerstone contents of the California State Normal School building, which was on the site before the library was built. The Normal School opened in 1882 and would later become UCLA.

Inside the Normal School capsule were relics related to the 1881 assassination of President Garfield, along with the 1881 Los Angeles population count, at 11,183.

"Both time capsules contained objects that represented the city more at large, so both of them had a lot of newspapers," Lerew said in the video, noting various Spanish, French and German newspapers.

Other items included coins from around the world, a ticket to the 1881 agricultural fair, and a copy of the Oshkosh Western newspaper.

In a few weeks, the contents of the 1925 time capsule will be on display at the Central Library throughout the year.

City Librarian John Szabo said the library will complete its own 2026 time capsule at the end of this year's centennial celebration.

A special 100-year commemoration library card is also available for patrons, while supplies last.