Picture a building shaped like a desert mesa, glowing with copper panels and glass, sitting right in the middle of downtown Phoenix. Inside, sunlight pours through skylights onto an entire acre of reading space, and steel beams stretch overhead like something out of a spaceship.
It happens to hold about a million books, but plenty of Arizona visitors show up just to gawk at the architecture. Best of all, wandering through this five-story marvel costs absolutely nothing.
Finding This Copper Giant on Central Avenue
Right along Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix stands a building that stops people mid-stroll. The Burton Barr Central Library sits at 1221 North Central Avenue, and you honestly cannot miss it once those copper walls catch the sun.
Serving as the flagship of the entire Phoenix Public Library system, this is the biggest library facility in the city. It stretches across 280,000 square feet and rises five full floors, holding roughly a million volumes inside…