The Torch of Knowledge

Archive article

The Torch of Knowledge

Los Angeles Central Public Library · Los Angeles, California

The Torch of Knowledge crowns the tiled pyramid roof of the Los Angeles Central Public Library. A hand grasps the upright torch above a vivid mosaic programme, making the sculpture visible from far beyond the building itself.

Hartley Burr Alexander conceived the library as a building to be read, its architecture carrying the history of writing and the ideas that move through books. At its summit, the torch turns that larger programme into a single public image: knowledge brought into the light.

At the base, a serpent coils through the tilework, a close detail that reveals the care given to the finial’s symbolic setting as well as to the torch above.

The crowning symbolism of the sculptural scheme is the finial torch held aloft in a realistic hand, symbol of the Light of Knowledge handed on by the human figures of literature and history, who have kept the light burning through the printed word.

Library Publication