Los Angeles Central Library Day Trip

Library's North Entrance on 5th Street

Destination: Los Angeles Central Library

Mode of Transportation: Montebello Bus Lines, Route 40

Total Cost: $2

Part library, part art gallery, and part historic building; the LA Central Library located at 630 West 5th Street in Downtown L.A. is a fun destination for kids, teens, and adults alike and makes a great inexpensive day trip for families.

Downtown traffic can be hectic and parking can get pricey, so I prefer to take public transportation whenever business or pleasure takes me into the city. Montebello Bus Line Route 40 starts in Whittier at Beverly and Norwalk Boulevards and heads straight into Downtown.

Library's Rotunda

A 40 minute bus ride from Montebello will have you stepping off the bus in front of Library Tower, the tallest building downtown. It sits across 5th Street from the library’s north entrance.

The library has 8 floors, three exhibit galleries, a library store, food court, Children’s Library and a separate study and work area for teenagers.

Adjacent to the main lobby on the first first floor is the Winnick Popular  Library. Its shelves and bookcases are stacked with the latest bestselling books, videos and magazines.

Teen'Scape Computer Room

Teen’Scape is an area reserved for teenagers and features books, videos, magazines and other materials for this teens. An amazing computer lounge with over 25 stations is reserved just for teens and notices promote Wii and Xbox tournaments on Friday afternoons.

The Children’s Library is a wonderful place to bring children of all ages. The area includes a sitting room with couches and a story theatre that features puppet shows on Saturdays.

Children's Library

Hungry visitors can visit the food court next to the West entrance, featuring a Panda Express and Food 630 which offers sandwiches, soups, salads, smoothies, ice cream and other snacks.

Guided tours of the library building and Maguire Gardens are available every day at 12:30pm on weekdays and 11am on Saturdays. Tours are one hour long.

Maguire Gardens

The Montebello Bus Line, Route 40 can be picked up  half a block away from the library at the corner of 6th and Grand, across the street from AT&T Center.

The Library is open Monday through Saturday at 10am - 5:30pm. The library is open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays until 8pm.

Regular Montebello Bus Lines Adult Bus Fare is $1.10 or $1 with a token. Students in grades K-12 are $.75, and children under 4 are free.

Click here for the Los Angeles Central Library website.

Click here for the Montebello Bus Lines website.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of MontebelloMom.com.
We would like to thank Montebello Bus Lines for donating transportation tokens for this outing.