Lafayette Square

After nearly a decade of preparation, restoration of the Felipe de Neve Public Library on the north side of Lafayette Park has begun. The library, built in 1929, has been closed since 1990 after building officials declared it unsafe. It has been replaced by a temporary storefront site at 610 S. Rampart Blvd. The $2.3-million library renovation was designed by Altoon and Porter Architects. The work will include seismic reinforcement and the addition of two pavilions.

The judge in the trial of a teen-ager accused of selling federal officials crack cocaine across the street from the White House called the government effort to show how easy it is to buy drugs a "Keystone Kops thing." First the alleged drug dealer didn't show up to make the sale in Lafayette Park, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Sam Gaye testified. Next the undercover officer's body microphone malfunctioned.

President Bush acknowledged Friday that the government set up a drug purchase in a park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to get a prop for his televised speech on the Administration's anti-drug strategy. "I think it was great," the President said, responding to questions about the sting operation. "It sent a message to the United States that, even across from the White House, they can sell drugs. It sends a powerful message to the American people."

Longtime Lafayette Park resident Juanita Cortez doesn't mind walking to do her errands, but she recalls a time when she didn't have to do as much of it. "I remember when you could take the trolley, on 7th Street I think it was, for 5 cents," said Cortez, 74. "Back then I used to live near the (now-closed) Ambassador Hotel. That's where Bobby Kennedy was shot, you know."

It didn't take long for the Guatemalan Unity Information Agency to figure out that putting together this year's health fair would be no walk in the park. There would be the usual job of recruiting participants for booths and tables at the annual community outreach event, of course. Plus the challenge of spreading the word through Los Angeles' growing Guatemalan immigrant community about the free services and assistance that would be available.

It was charming, affordable, and only 10 minutes from her Beverly Hills office, but literary agent Nancy Nigrosh had something else in mind last year when she bought her two-story home in Lafayette Square. "I had faith that the community was going to be enclosed and that my house would be part of it," she said, referring to a plan, supported by a slim majority of homeowners, to close the south, east and west entrances to the area by blocking the ends of the streets to create cul-de-sacs.

There's no substitute for a grand old hotel, preferably one that predates the Great Depression, appoints its public rooms with senatorial gravitas, and keeps a fleet of comfortable chairs on its veranda. This list is far from comprehensive (for a longer list of likely suspects, there's Historic Hotels of America (www.historichotels.org), but these are places we've checked out in the last few years. Ahwahnee, Yosemite National Park: Where once stood a Miwok village in Yosemite Valley, the Ahwahnee's stacked boulders and heavy beams serve park visitors who carry fat wallets and plan well ahead.

Doug Michels, an avant-garde architect and designer whose best-known public art piece, Cadillac Ranch -- a line of 10 vintage Caddies buried hood down and tailfins up off the interstate near Amarillo, Texas -- became an American cultural icon, has died. He was 59.

President and Mrs. Bush observed Palm Sunday by attending a worship service at a landmark Episcopal church a block from the White House. They knelt with other worshipers at the altar rail of St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square and received Holy Communion at the morning service. At the conclusion of the service, they were given traditional palm fronds.