About this Library
Harold A. Bezazian Branch opened January 26, 1957. Designed by Paul Gerhardt Jr., City Architect, the facility was named after Lieutenant Harold A. Bezazian, World War II hero and resident of the Uptown neighborhood. A resident of Uptown, Harold Bezazian was born on November 9, 1911 and graduated from Swift School, Senn High School and Columbia University. He worked as a magazine editor and reporter before enlisting in the Army in 1941. Mr. Bezazian was eventually promoted to First Lieutenant and served in Iceland, England and in the Phillippine Islands where he died in the Battle of Luzon on March 11, 1945. Harold Bezazian's father made a donation toward the construction of the Bezazian Branch in memory of his son. When Bezazian Branch opened, it became the seventeenth branch of the Chicago Public Library.
