Washington, D.C.’s Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke at a ceremony on Thursday to recognize the start of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library renovation project. The city’s central library—the only built library by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—has been closed since March 4 to prepare for a $208 million renovation by Dutch architecture firm Mecanoo and local firm Martinez+Johnson Architecture. (Check out a fly-through video that previews what the updated library building will look like when it reopens in 2020.)
At the ceremony, the Great Hall’s 56-by-7 foot mural by artist Donald Miller was removed to signify the start of the project. The mural will be reinstalled in the renovated building. Watch a video of the ceremony, posted on the DC Public Library’s Facebook page, below.
Read ARCHITECT’s past coverage of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
