It took a community to get this Seattle library built. Now it's celebrating 50 years of service

The Seattle Public Library's Broadview Branch should've been able to celebrate its 50th anniversary back in 2017, or thereabouts. After all, the City of Seattle bought the land to build it on back in 1967.

But a diversion of that funding delayed its construction — and rallied a community that fought for years to get its promised library.

Gloria Butts has been a Broadview resident for 62 years. At 93 years old, she had a wry sense of humor, noting first and foremost that she "married for love, not the name."

You could say she stayed in Broadview for love, too. She raised her daughters there, has been active in community groups, and has been a loyal library patron. But for those first few years, she said the neighborhood needed its own branch, one within walking distance, so parents like her wouldn't have to load the kids into the car for a trip to the Greenwood Branch.

"My library, Broadview Library is more than just books," Butts said. "It's the people that are there and help you."

On Jan. 24, Butts and her community will come together to celebrate the branch's 50th anniversary.

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, Broadview residents waited and fought to get this community resource built.

After purchasing the land for the library and drawing up the plans, the city changed its mind. The money for the library went instead to renovate the stadium for the Seattle Pilots, Seattle's first short-lived Major League Baseball team.

Broadview residents like Butts were outraged. It didn't help that the Pilots folded after just one season. The team went bankrupt, relocated to Milwaukee, and became the Brewers.

The neighborhood did get its library — it opened on on Dec. 15, 1975, and was officially dedicated the following January — after years of protest.

Community activist Elsie Von Stubbe was a key voice in the effort to get the library built. A woman of means and a measure of status, Butts said Von Stubbe, who died in 1995, was a "doer."

"Elsie was the one who said, 'We have to have a library,'" Butts recalled. "She would always ask people to do things [for the effort], and if Elsie asked you, you did them."

Among the Von Stubbe asks: regular appearances at Seattle City Council meetings and a read-in at the vacant lot where the library was supposed to be built. When Von Stubbe and her fellow activists finally won the fight for the library, one newspaper declared them to be the "world's greatest naggers."

Broadview librarian Alan Jacobson had a less cheeky take on the successful effort.

"It's a really beautiful thing," he said. "You think about the activists and regular folks who came along and read their Little Golden Books at the read-in. ... People really do love their library in this neighborhood, and all across the city, but this one has such a unique history and story."

More than 30 years after the original brick library was built, the branch was expanded to include a section with high ceilings, giving patrons more space to spread out, Jacobson said. It's also home to Native arts pieces by Quinault and Isleta-Pueblo artist Martin Oliver, and the building's architecture is meant to evoke a longhouse.

In addition to enjoying the library itself, Jacobson said patrons who attend the 50th anniversary celebration will be treated to food, prizes, and performances, including by a local hula group that practices in the library's meeting rooms. A neighborhood band called 3 Horn Quartet will also play and, perhaps contrary to what patrons might expect at the library, lead a marching band through the branch's stacks.

"If you never thought you needed to hear Guns N' Roses played on horns and a drum, you might have been wrong," Jacobson said.

The free celebration kicks off at 11 a.m. and ends at 5:30 p.m.