Library Exhibit Room

The California State Library was originally established in 1850 as a reference library for the California State Legislature. It has since grown to house millions of books, photographs, and other collections. The Library spent its first years traveling alongside the state government until Sacramento was designated the capital of California in 1854. 

When the Capitol was originally constructed, a three-story, semicircular structure called the Apse was built to house the California State Supreme Court and the California State Library. The Library moved in as soon as the Capitol building project was completed in 1869. Following a refurbishment around 1890, the Apse was recognized as one of the most beautiful parts of the Capitol building. It featured colorful frescoes, an ivory and gold color scheme, and a circular stained-glass skylight. In 1892, a reporter from The Daily Bee wrote that when sunlight shone through the skylight, “the effect of the glowing colors on the interior of the Library [was] exquisitely beautiful.”

The California State Library’s collection soon outgrew its two stories in the Apse, additionally occupying rooms north and south of the rotunda on the second and third floors and housing its law library on the ground floor. The State Library collection had exceeded 120,000 books by 1905. By 1910, 20% of the Capitol building’s floor space was being used by the Library. Due to its ever-increasing size, the State Library moved into a new building (that it would share with the State Supreme Court) in 1928 located on 10th Street across from the Capitol. The Library’s former home, the Apse of the Capitol building, was demolished in 1949 to make way for the East Annex. This six-story addition was intended to provide more office space for the growing state government. 

The Apse was not reconstructed during the 1970s restoration of the Capitol. Instead, a corner room that had served as one of the State Controller’s offices on the first floor was converted into an interpretive space that recreated the Library Reading Room as it would have appeared in 1906. It featured oak shelving and books loaned from the current California State Library. A reproduction exhibit case displayed a rotating collection of nineteenth-century artifacts. 

Today, the Library Exhibit Room has been converted into additional space for the California State Capitol Museum. It features rotating exhibits that celebrate the diversity of California’s many natural and cultural resources.