King's Heath Library

King's Heath Library is a district library built in 1905 to designs by Arthur Gilbey Latham. It was part-funded by Andrew Carnegie, with the library costing £3,368 from a grant of £12,500 given to King's Norton and Northfield Urban District Council for the erection of free libraries and reading rooms. Latham won the commission in open competition. The foundation stone was laid in August 1905 and the building was completed by the following year. The contractor was E Crowder. The building is constructed of red brick with a frontage onto the High Street of white Hollington stone, and has a slate and lead roof.

The building is single-storey with a reading room to the front and a reference room to the rear. The east front to the High Street features paired Ionic pilasters to the right hand corner and at either side of the prominent portal at left. The pilasters have projecting blocks to their lower bodies and support an entablature with a pulvinated frieze and deep cornice running across the front, above which is a parapet with balustrade. Three mullioned and transomed windows at right contain two lights, with three lights to the central window. The portal has a round arch with lugs and triple keystone, above which is an open pediment containing the inscription 'PUBLIC / LIBRARY / ANNO 1905' in relief. The parapet rises up behind the pediment. To the left of the portal is a 1982 extension in red brick laid in stretcher bond with bands of soldier-coursed brick to the upper part of the wall and forming a coping. This extension has three symmetrical bays with a central arched doorway slightly recessed and porthole windows to either side. The north flank has a projecting canted bay window at right with mullioned and transomed windows lighting the reading room, and sash windows with cambered heads to the left. The canted rear wall is blank.

The portal on the High Street front gives access to a lobby tiled with peacock blue tiles below a high dado line. A pair of iron gates with decorative panels featuring foliage motifs leads through. To the west side are two pairs of doors with glazed porthole windows to their upper bodies. The barrel-vaulted ceiling is panelled. The entrance corridor along the south side of the interior is similarly tiled to its dado. The reading room has a panelled barrel vault with a central rectangular skylight and to either side of the eastern window bay, which also has a small-scale barrel vault, are Tuscan columns with pronounced entasis. Throughout the interior, columns and ceilings are panelled and arched doorways are lugged. The decorative gates were made by Thomas Brawn of Birmingham. The library was acquired by Birmingham City Council in 1911. An extension was added in 1974 to house a children's library, designed by the Birmingham City Architects' Department with Philip Howl as project architect, following the council's purchase of the adjacent Hope Chapel site in March 1974.