Seattle's public library, unlike those of San Francisco or Chicago, was designed to be a downtown hangout, with something for everyone, as if you crossed Starbucks with a mega bookstore. Salt Lake City's public library goes one step further and adds a touch of the shopping mall. The architects, Moshe Safdie & Associates, made the focus of the building a skylit lobby-concourse, known as the "Urban Room." Like Milan's Galleria—the granddaddy of shopping malls—the dramatic space is a sort of indoor street, lined with shops. The library houses a cafe and a deli, a florist and a comic-book store, as well as an NPR station and a writing center. The book stacks and reference areas are on the left of the concourse; individual study carrels and reading nooks rise on the right. The result manages to be grandly civic and familiarly commonplace at the same time.