The New York Public Library

Welcome back ladies and gents. This week I will be taking you inside two of New York’s coolest buildings: The New York Public Library and The Empire State Building (coming soon). These two iconic structures are totally different when it comes to their look, feel, and vision, but each is an integral component of New York’s character. The Empire State Building, at the time it was constructed, represented forward-thinking, modernization, and new development, while the public library houses a collection of materials that reach into the past. Together the buildings remind us that as we forge ahead into the future, we must be mindful of where we came from and how we got here. And now, we jump in!

The majestic New York Public Library

The view of 5th Avenue looking out from the library 

Let’s start out on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42^nd Street. We have just emerged from Grand Central Terminal (last week’s adventure) and are now in full view of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, known also as The New York Public Library. (Fun fact: Stephen Schwarzman is the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group, a highly-esteemed asset management and financial services company, and recently threw himself a million dollar birthday party. His other interests include having large public libraries named after him.) Modest in size when compared with New York’s other towering buildings, the library is only a “quaint” 3 levels. Dr. John Shaw Billings was the first director of the library when it was founded back in 1895, and was also the one who thought of the design for the building. In 1911, after 16 years of construction, the library finally opened to the public with over one million new books inside. It’s hard to imagine that skyscrapers are erected today in less than a year, while a relatively small three-story library took 16 years to build!

Corridor displaying all of the marble

Inside the library, the architecture resembles that of Grand Central Terminal. Marble coats almost every surface and huge windows allow light to pour in from every angle. This Beaux-Arts style of architecture was very popular in the early 20^th century, and at the time of its conception, the library was the largest marble structure ever attempted in the United States. 

A list of donors etched into marble

View of the great arches and detailed ceiling artwork

Interestingly, it was constructed on the site of what was once the Croton Reservoir, which was slowly and painstakingly torn down by more than 500 workers over two years to make room for the new library. But in the end it was definitely worth all of the trouble - the library had between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors on the day of its grand opening!

Up the stairs to the second level

New York Census collection: 1870

There are 90 branch locations of the New York Public Library – enough material to keep a person occupied for years I would imagine. So needless to say I did not get to see everything. I’ll just cover the high points of my exploration at the main branch. The first room I stopped in was the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy. There were old census books of the city dating back to the 1800s and tons more old books lining the shelves. How cool would it be to find your family’s name in one of those? But what I found the most interesting were old, hand-drawn maps of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. The oldest one dated back to 1797, showing the island as it looked over two centuries ago – notably smaller, and with a few different street names. Manhattan has since been expanded into the Hudson and East Rivers by essentially dumping trash and building above the landfill. I also flipped through a large city planning book from the 1960’s describing the need for better transportation and safety measures. The area we currently live in was at that time one of the most dangerous parts of the city with poor housing conditions and a soaring crime rate, and is now a beautiful part of Manhattan. A job well-done, city planners of years past!

Map of Manhattan from 1797

Another stop on my journey was to the library's current exhibition and main attraction: Celebrating 100 Years. Inside, it more closely resembled a museum than a library, and had four miniature wings that pulled pieces from a diverse set of collections. The four wings were entitled Observation, Contemplation, Creativity and Society. The Observation segment was described in the following way: “alternatively interpretive, analytic, and emotional, observations of the natural world are grounded not only in what we see, but also what we know.” A neat artifact here included Ptolemy’s Geographia from the second century, a mathematical system for transforming geography into maps using latitude and longitude. 

Cuneiform tablets from Sumeria in an illegally-obtained (accidental) photo.

One of my favorite pieces in the Creativity wing was a letter opener belonging to Charles Dickens. It was more than a foot long and looked more like a sword or a knife than a letter opener. The handle was made of fur that belonged to his pet cat, Bob, and the blade is engraved “in loving memory of Bob 1862”. Besides being a renowned author, it seems Dickens was also quite the animal lover. Also in the Creativity wing were Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a comic book version of the same story, and John Coltrane's handwritten score of the jazz standard "Lover Man". These pieces reflect the cultural impact of the author's works, and also exemplify the library's pioneering acquisition of material once overlooked by other cultural institutions. 

Charles Dickens' letter opener

Finally, in the Society wing I found what, for me, will be the most memorable piece of the exhibition. It was a letter, not written by anyone whose name is taught in classrooms today, from an enslaved man to his wife. Written in the mid 1800’s, the note described how the man’s master told him to forget his wife and children, who had been taken away from him, and to find someone else. His master told him she would forget about him as well, and that he should remarry and move on with his life. He ended the letter by saying that he had no love but her and could not do as his master said, that he would always remember her and love her. This simple letter gave me a new perspective on my perceived struggles in life and reminded how far our nation has come in the past two centuries, and also how far we can go in the next.

A view from inside the library out to 5th Avenue

There are so many additional elements of the library that I didn’t get to explore. They have multiple enormous research centers, a wealth of online information, and millions of books from the past and present. A truly magnificent way to stay connected to our roots. And the best part – it’s all free! I plan to return many times in the future to explore everything the library has to offer. 

Semi bird's eye view of the library