Amid today's hoopla over the proposed "world class" new downtown library, one may forget the library we have now was originally thought the most modern thing one could imagine. It had replaced a grandiose old Carnegie-funded structure which, by the early '50s, was considered too small and too worn-down. Instead of the old library's bricks and pillars and neo-classical facade, we got a structure of clean lines, neutral pastel colors, bright fluorescent lighting, and the same "efficient" construction methods that have helped make all of downtown Seattle's government-built buildings of the period into prematurely collapsing eyesores.