The D.C. Office of Motion Picture and Television Development is pleased to honor the Anacostia Library in Southeast as the March 2012 One City Location of the Month. The Anacostia Library, which opened in April 2010, is an inviting two-story library that features 22,000 square feet of large open spaces that create an ideal learning space for the community. Expansive glass walls, skylight wedges that allow abundant natural light and metal panel pavilions are just a few features that make this unique library an ideal location for filming.

The exterior of the building is adorned with a large green perforated metal canopy that extends over a large frosted glass structure and a large entrance plaza that lines Good Hope Road welcomes visitors. A glass tower adjacent to the entry provides an attractive visual for library patrons as they arrive, while integrated stadium seating and benches provide places for outdoor reading.

The interior of the library features a variety of spaces to meet a wide range of community needs including a children’s program room, a large public meeting room that seats approximately 100 people, two smaller meeting rooms, and five smaller rooms for group study and tutoring. The back half of the building includes the stacks, a computer area, and a comfortable sitting room.

Anacostia Library also offers a number of environmental friendly features such as solar panels on the roof to heat water for the building, a bio-retention pond that removes pollutants from rain water that flows into the Anacostia River, and recycled materials in the flooring, countertops and wood finishes. The library earned a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) "Gold" Certification for environmentally sustainable design from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The library partnered with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and arts organizations, including the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative, to provide artwork for the library in the form of two murals. The two artists selected were Kamala Subramanian, an art teacher at the Seed School, who designed the mural wall and William C. Howard, an artist and teacher at Head Start, who designed the glass wall.

The facility, which currently holds approximately 40,000 books, was built with the capacity to hold 80,000 books, CDs, DVDs and other library materials. The Anacostia Library, designed by The Freelon Group, was the winner of the 2008 America Institute of Architects Triangle Merit Award in the Un-built Category. The library was one of the first branches to be completed as part of the District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) system’s commitment to rebuilding or repairing many of the 24 neighborhood libraries across the city.