What is the Mustang Library?
From Shea Boulevard it looks like an ordinary 1980s suburban branch library. It has more history than that.
The Mustang Library opened on June 13, 1987 at Shea Boulevard and 90th Street. It was the first branch of the Scottsdale Public Library, built as the city spread north and east along the Shea Corridor. At 31,850 square feet it was the largest branch library in Arizona when it opened, and it’s still the largest of Scottsdale’s three branches. Like the others it’s named for a horse breed.
Three things make it worth a stop beyond the books. Inside is Mustang Wall (1989), Ken Williams’s carved clay-brick relief of galloping mustangs. Scottsdale Public Art calls it the first work commissioned through the city’s Public Art Program, and it was paid for after the building’s own budget ran out. Outside, Mary Lucking’s Birdie Umwelt (2017) puts 20 bronze and stainless-steel house finches, each reading a book, along the path from the bus stop. And on November 17, 1990, about a dozen residents met in this building and formed the land trust that became the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy. That group pushed Scottsdale into creating the McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
How to visit
Hours. As of fall 2026: Monday–Thursday 9 a.m.–7 p.m., Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 1–5 p.m. The drive-up window closes an hour earlier Monday through Friday. All city libraries close on library holidays and staff days, listed on the library’s locations page. It’s free, with 35 public computers.
Start outside. Birdie Umwelt runs from the east bus shelter of the Mustang Transit Center to the library entrance. Lucking, who trained in architecture at Wellesley and lives in Phoenix, explained the idea in Scottsdale Public Art’s description of the piece: “When I first visited the Mustang Transit Center site, I was struck by the number of birds that made their homes around the library. … I wondered what books in the nearby Mustang Library these creatures might find most compelling.” The 20 finches are each reading a different book, and the title points to Lucking’s question about how birds and people perceive the same space. Look for the birdhouse that copies the library’s postmodern design. The birds, feathers and lettering sandblasted into the path show up best when the sun is low.
Find the horses. Inside, Mustang Wall is a bas-relief, a sculpture whose figures project less than half their full depth. A herd of mustangs runs across a background of desert mesas, all carved in clay brick. The architect and interior designer wanted it to give the building’s interior “focus,” in Scottsdale Public Art’s words. The collection also lists Horse here, a laminated-plywood sculpture by Maxine Kim Stussy. She gave it to the Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission in 1975; the collection dates it 1976. It’s a wooden horse by an artist who, around the early 1970s, developed a severe allergy to wood and had to switch to bronze and clay.
Then drive Shea. Joe Tyler’s six bus shelters (1997) begin a few blocks east. The two Sonoran Monsoon shelters are steel trees bent by the wind, with round benches. The first is just east of 92nd Street on the south side, and the other is west of Via Linda on the north side. Four Desert Moods shelters, saguaros holding up cloud-shaped roofs, stand farther east between 124th and 136th streets. Our public art on the road guide has the full route.
Make it a Preserve day. If you’re coming for the founding-meeting history, the trails are a short drive north. The Gateway Trailhead is the obvious place to start.
The branch that followed the city north
By the mid-1980s Scottsdale’s library was one building. Bennie Gonzales’s Civic Center Library of 1968 was being enlarged in 1987, but it was in Old Town, miles from the neighborhoods growing along Shea Boulevard. The Mustang branch was the city’s answer. It opened in June 1987, the first of four branches over the next twenty-two years, all named for horse breeds. Palomino (1995) and Arabian (1996) followed as shared libraries on school campuses, and Arabian got its own building in 2007. Appaloosa (2009) went up on the old Rawhide grounds. Palomino closed to the public in 2020, which left three branches. Mustang is still the largest.
The mural the budget couldn’t cover
The building’s best-documented story is how its art got paid for. According to Scottsdale Public Art, while the library was under construction, its architect, Hal Dean, and its interior designer, MBID, looked for an artwork that would “complete the interior of the building and give it focus.” They chose Ken Williams (born 1944), a clay-brick muralist from Pueblo, Colorado, with commissions across the West. Then the building money ran short, and the mural couldn’t be paid for as planned.
The library director asked the Scottsdale Cultural Council, chartered in June 1987 to run the city’s arts programs and now called Scottsdale Arts, to fund it. After a selection process, the council agreed to pay from the city’s public-art money and to keep Williams, as the designers had intended. Mustang Wall was finished in 1989. Scottsdale Public Art lists the Mustang Library as “the site of the first piece of art commissioned through the Public Art Program for the City of Scottsdale.” The city owned plenty of art before that, from donated sculptures at the Civic Center to pieces the Fine Arts Commission bought in the 1970s. The Mustang Wall was the first commission under the formal program that has since paid for art on bridges, canals, bus shelters and fire stations across the city.
Who Hal Dean was is a loose end. Scottsdale Public Art names him but not his firm, and the city’s 2012 historic context credits a 1985 Civic Center parking deck to Dean/Hunt/Krueger & Associates. They may be the same architect, but we haven’t confirmed it. The building permit file in the city’s records, or the library’s opening coverage in the Scottsdale Progress in the Scottsdale Heritage Connection, would settle it.
Twelve people in a meeting room
The library’s most important event wasn’t about books. In 1990 Scottsdale covered about 185 square miles, and grading for houses was climbing the McDowell Mountains. On November 17, 1990, about a dozen people met at the Mustang Library: hikers, scientists, a lawyer and residents including Jane Rau. They formed a land trust to keep the range from being subdivided. It incorporated in January 1991. Within five years its campaign had produced a city Preserve resolution in 1994 and, in 1995, a voter-approved sales tax to buy the land. The Conservancy’s guide tells the full story. The records we found don’t say which room they met in.
Why it matters
Mustang is a working branch library in a shopping-center part of town, and that’s the point. The city’s first public art commission went into an ordinary building that thousands of people use. The Preserve began in a public room that any group of residents could book. Twenty-eight years after the mural, the art program came back to put reading finches on the walk from the bus stop. Of all the buildings on Shea, this is the one most worth stopping at.