Have you ever wanted to know more about the heritage of our fabulous Central Library building or fancied looking behind the scenes?
We are now offering bookable heritage tours around the building showing you how it has changed over the years and letting you see parts not usually accessible to the public.
To whet your appetite have a look at some of our ‘before and after’ merged images.
View from the current Lending Library to what is now the Children’s Library but was earlier the Music and Audio Library.
The wonderful Tiled Hall has changed use many times but here we can see it currently as a cafe and in a previous incarnation as a Sculpture Gallery.
Again in the Tiled Hall this image shows the current cafe on the left with restoration work carried out before the cafe moved in.
Another room used for many different purposes over the years. On the right is the current view of it as the Art Library and on the left as the Lending Library and below the opposite way round.
Reaching the second floor we are now in what is currently the Information and Research library.
and a second view.
Finally the magnificent room which is currently the Local and Family History Library and was the original Reference Library.
To find out all the history of the building, see many more images and access behind the scenes book on to one of our heritage tours.
Please note some behind the scenes areas are not wheelchair accessible.
Prices £5 adults. Please book online at http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/leedslibraryevents
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 
Great work of the photos. There must be photos of some of the library rooms when they were Police rooms as well. It is interesting to see what happens over the years with buildings like this nd you have a great example in the Tiled Hall as evidence of the changes. An excelent post on one of Leeds best buildings.
These photographs are out of this world. What a fantastic idea and a great way to lease new life into an already amazing building.
Hello John, thank you for your comment, great you loved the photos. We do have photos of the police rooms on our Leodis website and will be doing a future post here as well. An example of one of the photos is here http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIdentifier=2007625_163950