Description
The New York Public Library, officially the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, is the flagship of the city's library system: a white marble Beaux-Arts palace on Fifth Avenue at 41st Street, with two stone lions at the door and one of the most beautiful reading rooms in America.
Start at the entrance with the lions, Patience and Fortitude, then climb into Astor Hall, the marble lobby with its grand staircases. The busts of the two architects, Carrère and Hastings, stand at the bottom of the stairs.
Upstairs is the Rose Main Reading Room, 297 feet (91 meters) long and 52 feet (16 meters) high, under a painted ceiling and chandeliers. Rows of long oak tables, green-shaded lamps, and the books still arriving from the stacks on request.
Among the treasures: the Gutenberg Bible, the first to reach the United States, in the rare books collection; one of the world's great map collections, with more than 20,000 atlases; and, in the Children's Center, the original stuffed toys that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh. The library has also been a film set many times.
When it opened in May 1911, so many people poured in that nobody managed to count them: the directors guessed a quarter of a million in the first week. It rose on the site of the old Croton Reservoir, whose walls were 25 feet thick, and the library itself was born from a merger of the Astor and Lenox libraries.
The two marble lions were first called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after the founders. In the 1930s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them Patience and Fortitude: New Yorkers would need both to get through the Great Depression.
In 2014 one of the plaster rosettes of the reading room's ceiling crashed to the floor. After the repair they are held up by steel cables. Under neighboring Bryant Park, out of sight, run miles of the library's shelves.
Start at the entrance with the lions, Patience and Fortitude, then climb into Astor Hall, the marble lobby with its grand staircases. The busts of the two architects, Carrère and Hastings, stand at the bottom of the stairs.
Upstairs is the Rose Main Reading Room, 297 feet (91 meters) long and 52 feet (16 meters) high, under a painted ceiling and chandeliers. Rows of long oak tables, green-shaded lamps, and the books still arriving from the stacks on request.
Among the treasures: the Gutenberg Bible, the first to reach the United States, in the rare books collection; one of the world's great map collections, with more than 20,000 atlases; and, in the Children's Center, the original stuffed toys that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh. The library has also been a film set many times.
When it opened in May 1911, so many people poured in that nobody managed to count them: the directors guessed a quarter of a million in the first week. It rose on the site of the old Croton Reservoir, whose walls were 25 feet thick, and the library itself was born from a merger of the Astor and Lenox libraries.
The two marble lions were first called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after the founders. In the 1930s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia renamed them Patience and Fortitude: New Yorkers would need both to get through the Great Depression.
In 2014 one of the plaster rosettes of the reading room's ceiling crashed to the floor. After the repair they are held up by steel cables. Under neighboring Bryant Park, out of sight, run miles of the library's shelves.