Uninspiring architecture makes British Library treasures a bitter disappointment

It's been 17 years since the British Library moved into its purpose-built facilities next to St. Pancras Station.  I must admit, sheepishly, that I'd never been there.  In my earlier years living in the UK, and as a tourist before that, I regularly strolled around the treasures of its collection.  They were stored in several magnificent rooms to the right of the main entry hall at the British Museum, which was a required stop on any visit to London.  The new building is only a mile north of the old display rooms, but in a part of town I rarely traverse.

With some time on my hands, I decided to make it a priority.  What a crushing disappointment.  A large part of me wishes I'd stayed away, polishing and embellishing my original memories from the British Museum.  No such luck.

The building is a graceless, multi-level sprawl of red brick, evoking the architecture of a 1980s shopping mall.  Where, I wondered, was the John Lewis?  In the front door, the mall feeling continued.  There's a large, sunlit atrium, stepping up in terraces to the only majestic decorative element.  This is the King's Library, where thousands of exquisite, leather-bound tomes gathered by George III are stacked in a tower rising six stories from basement to roof.  Sadly, it's screened from your view from the front door by white concrete columns, and you have to get close to it to even realise it's comprised of real books.  It's a design background rather than a highlight.  Scattered around it, on multiple levels, are cafe tables packed with people meeting and working, fuelled by a restaurant at the back of the atrium.  No august, majestic temple to wisdom here.  It's a giant Starbucks.

The treasures are in a room off to the left.  It's a low ceilinged, darkened room with all the manuscripts in similar glass cases.  I could argue that the austerity of design forces attention onto the manuscripts, thus making them the star of the show.  Sorry.  It didn't work for me.

These treasures are precious relics of English civilisation.  And, given the role English literature has played in the education, entertainment and myth making of the rest of the English-speaking world, they're equally awe inspiring to foreigners.  I found it hard to breathe, the first time I saw them.  The world's only surviving manuscript of Beowulf.  Jaw-dropping illuminated manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels.  Shakespeare first folios.  Handel's Messiah, in his own hand.  Manuscript drafts of great novels by Dickens and Austen.  Just as the relics of saints are elevated and bring on holy awe (even if they're manufactured!) by the setting of the magnificent cathedrals around them, so these treasures once were by the lofty Georgian architecture of the British Museum.

The great libraries of the world are palatial temples to books.  The architecture elevates what they are built to house.  More than words, pictures or notes on a page, awe-inspiring settings remind you that  these documents are the building blocks of human intellect.  They are our culture.  All that is fine and noble, comforting and inspiring, is represented in a core library.  The headquarters of the New York Public Library in Manhattan does this beautifully.  But libraries like Philip II's magnificent example at El Escorial have been doing this for centuries.  And though I prefer the grandeur of classic styles, I believe modern architecture can create the same drama.  The "core" library at Northwestern University, with its stacks of the essential texts in each discipline radiating starburst-like from a hushed, multi-story centre is a wonderful place.  Despite being a blatantly modernistic fantasy of concrete blocks.

Nothing at the British Library celebrates its treasures, or gives them the respect they're due.  They're a forgotten appendage on one side of a bustling cafe, and a bit of wallpaper cutting through its middle.  It was a bitter disappointment.

Admittedly, the building succeeds on other levels.  It's a triumph of efficiency.  In the British Museum years, its functional collections were scattered in buildings all over the country.  Now, they're all together, and people can quickly get what they need.  If you need a place to work or meet people in this part of town, the atmosphere's better than a commercial coffee shop and the prices a bit cheaper; though the free WiFi creeps sluggishly.

But as a showpiece to celebrate the majesty of literature, it no longer works.

You'll find a far more pleasing setting in the building next door, where I had lunch.  St. Pancras Station is on the other end of the architectural spectrum from the Library.  Its facade is bombastic, detail-rich Victorian neo-gothic from the same George Gilbert Scott who designed the Albert Memorial.  It was mouldering and unpopular when the British Library was being designed in shopping mall chic.  Now, it's been renovated and the hotel at its front restored to splendour that reminds you of the Palace of Westminster.

The old Booking Office, a vaulted cathedral of a room between the station platforms and the hotel, is now a trendy restaurant with comfortable leather chairs, an impressively stocked cocktail bar and a bustlingly-efficient staff.  If you like dining in impressive rooms, the Booking Office is one for you.  It's a classic bar and grill menu, with prices about 15% over the average to account for location.

I had  planned for great literature to be the best part of my day.  Instead, it was a hamburger and a glass of wine while catching up with an old friend.  There's the power of architecture for you.