Powell’s bravura sensibility is apparent in Odessa’s first purpose-designed public library. This long, low, one-story library’s corner entrance is located in a quarter-circle bay framed by projecting curved bays. Steel sash windows, a panel of glass block, and alternating raised brick courses animate the buff brick building texturally and spatially. The rear wing steps up over a raised basement to further enliven the library’s profile. Odessa’s newfound oil wealth made possible the ultimate luxury in 1942: central air-conditioning.
The former library shares the N. Lee Avenue and W. 7th Street intersection with another bastion of West Texan respectability: the conservative, buff brick and tile-roofed, Romanesque-styled First Baptist Church (1955, Wilson, Patterson and Associates). Around the corner on W. 8th Street is the congregation’s twenty-first-century worship center, a sleek, glass-faced, metal-roofed 1,500-seat arena (2013, The Beck Group).