New York Public Library Main Branch
Encyclopedia
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library
, more widely known as the Main Branch or simply as "the New York Public Library," is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system and a prominent historic landmark in Midtown Manhattan
. The branch, opened in 1911, is one of four research libraries in the library system. It is located on Fifth Avenue at its intersection with 42nd Street
.
The Library's famous Rose Main Reading Room (Room 315) is a majestic 78 feet (23.8 m) wide and 297 feet (90.5 m) long, with 52-foot (15.8 m) high ceilings. The room is lined with thousands of reference work
s on open shelves along the floor level and along the balcony, lit by massive windows and grand chandelier
s, and furnished with sturdy wood tables, comfortable chairs, and brass
lamps. It is also equipped with computers providing access to library collections and the Internet
as well as docking facilities for laptop
s. Readers study books brought to them from the library's closed stacks. There are special rooms for notable authors and scholars, many of whom have done important research and writing at the Library. But the Library has always been about more than scholars; during the Great Depression, many ordinary people, out of work, used the Library to improve their lot in life, as they still do.
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark
in 1965.
on the library building is about three feet thick, and the building is marble and brick all the way through. The exterior is 20,000 blocks of stone, each one numbered in preparation for a renovation announced in 2007. It stretches 390 feet along Fifth Avenue.
Two stone lions lie at either side of the stairway to the entrance. The famous lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter
. Their original names, "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox" (in honor of the library's founders) were transformed into Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (although both lions are male), and in the 1930s they were nicknamed "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia, who chose the names because he felt that the citizens of New York would need to possess these qualities to see themselves through the Great Depression
. Patience is on the south side (the left as one faces the main entrance) and Fortitude on the north.
Before the end pavilions
are flagpoles, whose sculpted bronze bases designed by Thomas Hastings
in 1912 were realized by the sculptor Raffaele Menconi
, who often worked closely with New York architects of the Beaux-Arts generation and had a deft command of the 16th century Italian Mannerist classical idiom that was required by Hasting's design. The bronzes were cast at Tiffany Studios in Long Island City. They were rededicated to New York's former Reform mayor, John Purroy Mitchell.
The consolidation of several libraries into the New York Public Library in 1901, along with the large Tilden bequest and the Carnegie donation, allowed for the creation of an enormous library system befitting the nation's largest city, but the founders also wanted an imposing main branch. A prominent, central site for it was available at the two-block section of Fifth avenue between 40th and 42nd streets, then occupied by the Croton Reservoir
, which was obsolete and no longer needed. Dr. John Shaw Billings who was named first director of the New York Public Library seized the opportunity. He knew exactly what he wanted there. His design for the new library became the basis of the landmark building that became the central Research Library (now known as the Humanities and Social Science Library) on Fifth Avenue.
Billings's plan called for a huge reading room on top of seven floors of bookstacks combined with the fastest system for getting books into the hands of those who requested to read them. Following a competition among the city's most famous architects, the relatively unknown firm of Carrère and Hastings
was selected to design and construct the new library. The result, regarded as the apex of Beaux-Arts design, was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. The cornerstone was laid in May 1902.
Work progressed slowly but steadily on the Library which eventually cost $9 million to build. During the summer of 1905, huge columns were put into place and work on the roof was begun. By the end of 1906, the roof was finished and the designers commenced five years of interior work. In 1910, 75 miles of shelves were installed to house the collections that were set to make their home there, with plenty of space left for future acquisitions. It took a whole year to move and install the books that were in the Astor and Lenox libraries.
On May 23, 1911, the main branch of the New York Public Library was officially opened. The ceremony was presided over by President William Howard Taft
and was attended by Governor John Alden Dix
and Mayor William Jay Gaynor
.
The following day, May 24, the public was invited. The response was sensational. Tens of thousands thronged to the Library's "jewel in the crown." The opening day collection consisted of more than 1,000,000 volumes. The New York Public Library instantly became one of the nation's largest libraries and a vital part of the intellectual life of America. True to Dr. Billings' plan, library records for that day show that one of the very first items called for was N. I. Grot's ("Ethical Ideas of Our Time") a study of Friedrich Nietzsche
and Leo Tolstoy
. The reader filed his slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book just six minutes later.
Over the decades, the research collection grew until, by the 1970s, it was clear that eventually the collection would outgrow the existing structure. So it was decided to make the library bigger by burrowing underground toward Bryant Park
. In the 1980s the central research library added more than 125000 square feet (11,612.9 m²) of space and literally miles of bookshelf space to its already vast storage capacity to make room for future acquisitions. This expansion required a major construction project in which Bryant Park, directly west of the library, was closed to the public and excavated. The new library facilities were built below ground level. The park was then restored on top of the underground facilities and re-opened to the public.
On July 17, 2007, the building was briefly evacuated and the surrounding area was cordoned off by New York police because of a suspicious package found across the street. It turned out to be a bag of old clothes.
In the three decades before 2007, the building's interior was gradually renovated. In December 2005, the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division space, with richly carved wood, marble, and metalwork, was restored.
On December 20, 2007, the library announced it will undertake a three-year, $50 million renovation of the building exterior, which has suffered damage from weathering and automobile exhaust. The Vermont marble structure and the sculpture elements on it were to be cleaned, 3,000 cracks were to be repaired, and restoration work would also be done on the roof, stairs, and plazas. All of the work was scheduled to be completed by the centennial in 2011. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, on behalf of the library, asked the mayor of Paris to lend to New York the services of François Jousse, the city engineer responsible for lighting Paris' monuments, structures and official buildings. "My ambition is for this to be the building you simply must see in New York at nighttime because it is so beautiful and it is so important," library director Paul LeClerc
said in 2007.
As of 2004, streaks were already blackening the white marble and pollution and moisture were corroding the ornamental statuary, causing architectural details to erode, including the edges of cornices and features on carved faces. "Tiny particles of rubber scattered by passing car tires have accumulated on the building, mixing gradually with water to turn the marble into gypsum, which causes the outer layer to crumble in a sugaring effect," according to an article in The New York Times.
By late 2007, library officials had not yet decided whether to try to restore damaged sculptural elements or just clean and "stabilize" them. Cleaning would be done either with lasers or by applying poultices and peeling them off.
In 2008, the library announced that the main branch building would be renamed in honor of Stephen A. Schwarzman
, in recognition of his agreement to donate $100 million toward the renovation and expansion of the building.
It was featured in the 1978 film
The Wiz
when Dorothy
and Toto stumble across it, one of its comes to life, and joins them on their journey out of Oz
. It was a major location in the 2004 apocalyptic
science fiction
film The Day After Tomorrow
, and also appears in the Futurama
parody of the film, in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
." It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters
, when a a librarian in the basement reports seeing a ghost which becomes violent when approached. It serves as the backdrop for a central plot development in the 2002 film Spider-Man
Additionally, the building is featured as a wedding venue in the 2008 film Sex and the City.
Other films in which the library appears include 42nd Street
(1933), Portrait of Jennie
(1948), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now
(1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes
(1970), Chapter Two
(1979), Escape from New York
(1981), Regarding Henry
(1991), The Thomas Crown Affair
(1999), and The Time Machine
(2002).
In television, the library was featured in the "The Library
" episode of Seinfeld
, in which Cosmo Kramer
dates a librarian there, Jerry Seinfeld
is accosted by a library cop named Mr. Bookman for late fees, and George Costanza
encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its stairs. It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory," the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's
Cosmos
TV series. It also appears in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler
(as the fictional Drexler Museum of Art) as a backdrop and brief meeting place for characters and in the third season of the CW series Gossip Girl
, and the interior was used as the interior of Unity Hall, the capitol of the fictional Kingdom of Gilboa, in the NBC series Kings
.
The Library also appears in literature. Lynne Sharon Schwartz's
Writing on the Wall (2005) features a language researcher at NYPL who grapples with her past following the September 11 attacks. Cynthia Ozick
's novel Heir to the Glimmering World (2004) set just prior to World War II
, involves a scholar who has fled from Nazi Germany
researching the Karaite Jews
at NYPL. Matthew Reilly's
novel Contest
(1996) sets an intergalactic gladiator
ial fight in the NYPL, resulting in the building's total destruction. Jerome Badanes' novel The Final Opus of Leon Solomon (1985) is based on the real-life tragedy of an impoverished scholar who stole books from the Jewish Division of the Library, only to be caught and commit suicide. A lightly fictionalized portrait of the Jewish Division's first chief, Abraham Solomon Freidus, is found in a chapter of Abraham Cahan
's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917).
Lawrence Blochman
's Death Walks in Marble Halls (1942) features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer. Jane Smiley
's Duplicate Keys (1984), also a murder mystery, featured an NYPL librarian who stumbles upon two bodies of people who died in 1930. Allen Kurzweil
's novel The Grand Complication (2001) is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are put to work finding a missing museum object. Donna Hill, who was herself an NYPL librarian in the 1950s, set her novel Catch a Brass Canary (1965) at an NYPL branch library.
Several poems involve the Library, including E. B. White
's "A Library Lion Speaks" and "Reading Room" in Poems and Sketches of E.B. White (1981); Richard Eberhart's
"Reading Room, The New York Public Library," in Collected Poems, 1930-1986 (1988); and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
's "Library Scene, Manhattan," in How to Paint Sunlight (2001). Excerpts from several of the many memoirs and essays mentioning the New York Public Library are included in the anthology Reading Rooms (1991), including reminiscences by Alfred Kazin
, Henry Miller
, and Kate Simon.
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
, more widely known as the Main Branch or simply as "the New York Public Library," is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system and a prominent historic landmark in Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...
. The branch, opened in 1911, is one of four research libraries in the library system. It is located on Fifth Avenue at its intersection with 42nd Street
42nd Street (Manhattan)
42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
.
The Library's famous Rose Main Reading Room (Room 315) is a majestic 78 feet (23.8 m) wide and 297 feet (90.5 m) long, with 52-foot (15.8 m) high ceilings. The room is lined with thousands of reference work
Reference work
A reference work is a compendium of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a book for ease of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when needed. Reference works are usually referred to for particular pieces of information, rather than read beginning to end...
s on open shelves along the floor level and along the balcony, lit by massive windows and grand chandelier
Chandelier
A chandelier is a branched decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture with two or more arms bearing lights. Chandeliers are often ornate, containing dozens of lamps and complex arrays of glass or crystal prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light...
s, and furnished with sturdy wood tables, comfortable chairs, and brass
Brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...
lamps. It is also equipped with computers providing access to library collections and the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
as well as docking facilities for laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s. Readers study books brought to them from the library's closed stacks. There are special rooms for notable authors and scholars, many of whom have done important research and writing at the Library. But the Library has always been about more than scholars; during the Great Depression, many ordinary people, out of work, used the Library to improve their lot in life, as they still do.
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 1965.
The building
MarbleMarble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
on the library building is about three feet thick, and the building is marble and brick all the way through. The exterior is 20,000 blocks of stone, each one numbered in preparation for a renovation announced in 2007. It stretches 390 feet along Fifth Avenue.
Two stone lions lie at either side of the stairway to the entrance. The famous lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter
Edward Clark Potter
Edward Clark Potter was an American sculptor best known for his equestrian and animal statues. His works include the "Fortitude" lion in front of the New York Public Library.-Early years:...
. Their original names, "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox" (in honor of the library's founders) were transformed into Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (although both lions are male), and in the 1930s they were nicknamed "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor
Mayor of New York City
The Mayor of the City of New York is head of the executive branch of New York City's government. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property, police and fire protection, most public agencies, and enforces all city and state laws within New York City.The budget overseen by the...
Fiorello La Guardia, who chose the names because he felt that the citizens of New York would need to possess these qualities to see themselves through the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Patience is on the south side (the left as one faces the main entrance) and Fortitude on the north.
Pavilion (structure)
In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...
are flagpoles, whose sculpted bronze bases designed by Thomas Hastings
Thomas Hastings (architect)
Thomas Hastings was an American architect.- Biography :He was born in New York City to Thomas Samuel Hastings, a Presbyterian minister, and Fanny de Groot. Hastings came from a colonial Yankee background, his ancestor Thomas Hastings having come from the East Anglia region of England to the...
in 1912 were realized by the sculptor Raffaele Menconi
Raffaele Menconi
Raffaele Menconi was an Italian sculptor who established a practice in New York City with his brother Giuseppe . Menconi realised the bronze architectural sculptures and fittings for a generation of Beaux-Arts architects, such as Carrère and Hastings; Menconi's bronze flagpole bases for the Fifth...
, who often worked closely with New York architects of the Beaux-Arts generation and had a deft command of the 16th century Italian Mannerist classical idiom that was required by Hasting's design. The bronzes were cast at Tiffany Studios in Long Island City. They were rededicated to New York's former Reform mayor, John Purroy Mitchell.
History
Croton Distributing Reservoir
The Croton Distributing Reservoir, also known as the Murray Hill Reservoir, was an above-ground reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It supplied the city with drinking water during the 19th century. The reservoir was a man-made lake in area,...
, which was obsolete and no longer needed. Dr. John Shaw Billings who was named first director of the New York Public Library seized the opportunity. He knew exactly what he wanted there. His design for the new library became the basis of the landmark building that became the central Research Library (now known as the Humanities and Social Science Library) on Fifth Avenue.
Billings's plan called for a huge reading room on top of seven floors of bookstacks combined with the fastest system for getting books into the hands of those who requested to read them. Following a competition among the city's most famous architects, the relatively unknown firm of Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings , located in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident...
was selected to design and construct the new library. The result, regarded as the apex of Beaux-Arts design, was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. The cornerstone was laid in May 1902.
On May 23, 1911, the main branch of the New York Public Library was officially opened. The ceremony was presided over by President William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...
and was attended by Governor John Alden Dix
John Alden Dix
John Alden Dix was the 38th Governor of New York from January 1911 to December 1912.-Life:Born in Glens Falls, Warren County, New York, Dix attended Cornell University, but never graduated. He was an initiated member of the Beta Charge of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity...
and Mayor William Jay Gaynor
William Jay Gaynor
William Jay Gaynor was an American politician from New York City, associated with the Tammany Hall political machine. He served as mayor of the City of New York from 1910 to 1913, as well as stints as a New York Supreme Court Justice from 1893 to 1909.-Early life:Gaynor was born in Oriskany, New...
.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
. The reader filed his slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book just six minutes later.
Over the decades, the research collection grew until, by the 1970s, it was clear that eventually the collection would outgrow the existing structure. So it was decided to make the library bigger by burrowing underground toward Bryant Park
Bryant Park
Bryant Park is a 9.603 acre privately managed public park located in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and between 40th and 42nd Streets in Midtown Manhattan...
. In the 1980s the central research library added more than 125000 square feet (11,612.9 m²) of space and literally miles of bookshelf space to its already vast storage capacity to make room for future acquisitions. This expansion required a major construction project in which Bryant Park, directly west of the library, was closed to the public and excavated. The new library facilities were built below ground level. The park was then restored on top of the underground facilities and re-opened to the public.
On July 17, 2007, the building was briefly evacuated and the surrounding area was cordoned off by New York police because of a suspicious package found across the street. It turned out to be a bag of old clothes.
On December 20, 2007, the library announced it will undertake a three-year, $50 million renovation of the building exterior, which has suffered damage from weathering and automobile exhaust. The Vermont marble structure and the sculpture elements on it were to be cleaned, 3,000 cracks were to be repaired, and restoration work would also be done on the roof, stairs, and plazas. All of the work was scheduled to be completed by the centennial in 2011. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, on behalf of the library, asked the mayor of Paris to lend to New York the services of François Jousse, the city engineer responsible for lighting Paris' monuments, structures and official buildings. "My ambition is for this to be the building you simply must see in New York at nighttime because it is so beautiful and it is so important," library director Paul LeClerc
Paul LeClerc
Paul LeClerc is president and chief executive officer of the New York Public Library. He attended Holy Cross High School in Flushing, New York, and was part of their first graduating class in 1959. He is a former president of Hunter College and is a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation...
said in 2007.
As of 2004, streaks were already blackening the white marble and pollution and moisture were corroding the ornamental statuary, causing architectural details to erode, including the edges of cornices and features on carved faces. "Tiny particles of rubber scattered by passing car tires have accumulated on the building, mixing gradually with water to turn the marble into gypsum, which causes the outer layer to crumble in a sugaring effect," according to an article in The New York Times.
By late 2007, library officials had not yet decided whether to try to restore damaged sculptural elements or just clean and "stabilize" them. Cleaning would be done either with lasers or by applying poultices and peeling them off.
In 2008, the library announced that the main branch building would be renamed in honor of Stephen A. Schwarzman
Stephen A. Schwarzman
Stephen Allen Schwarzman is an American businessman and investor and the chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, the private-equity and financial advisory firm.-Early life and education:...
, in recognition of his agreement to donate $100 million toward the renovation and expansion of the building.
In film and television
The building has frequently appeared or been referenced in artistic, literary, and cultural works.It was featured in the 1978 film
1978 in film
The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 1 - Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a documentary of the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour premieres in Los Angeles, California....
The Wiz
The Wiz (film)
The Wiz is a 1978 musical film produced by Motown Productions and Universal Pictures, and released by Universal on October 24, 1978. An urbanized retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz featuring an entirely African-American cast, The Wiz was adapted from the 1975 Broadway musical...
when Dorothy
Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is the protagonist of many of the Oz novels by American author L. Frank Baum, and the best friend of Oz's ruler Princess Ozma. Dorothy first appears in Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels...
and Toto stumble across it, one of its comes to life, and joins them on their journey out of Oz
Land of Oz
Oz is a fantasy region containing four lands under the rule of one monarch.It was first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, one of many fantasy countries that he created for his books. It achieved a popularity that none of his other works attained, and after four years, he...
. It was a major location in the 2004 apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
film The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 American science-fiction disaster film that depicts the catastrophic effects of global warming in a series of extreme weather events that usher in global cooling which leads to a new ice age. The film did well at the box office, grossing $542,771,772 internationally...
, and also appears in the Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
parody of the film, in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
The Day the Earth Stood Stupid
"The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" is the seventh episode in season three of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on February 18, 2001...
." It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters is a 1984 American science fiction comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, and Rick Moranis and follows three eccentric parapsychologists in New York City, who start a...
, when a a librarian in the basement reports seeing a ghost which becomes violent when approached. It serves as the backdrop for a central plot development in the 2002 film Spider-Man
Spider-Man (film)
Spider-Man is a 2002 American superhero film, the first in the Spider-Man film series based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. It was directed by Sam Raimi and written by David Koepp...
Additionally, the building is featured as a wedding venue in the 2008 film Sex and the City.
Other films in which the library appears include 42nd Street
42nd Street (film)
-Cast:*Warner Baxter as Julian Marsh, director*Bebe Daniels as Dorothy Brock, star*George Brent as Pat Denning, Dorothy's old vaudeville partner*Ruby Keeler as Peggy Sawyer, the newcomer*Guy Kibbee as Abner Dillon, the show's backer...
(1933), Portrait of Jennie
Portrait of Jennie
Portrait of Jennie is a 1948 fantasy film based on the novella by Robert Nathan. The film was directed by William Dieterle and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten.-Plot:...
(1948), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now
You're a Big Boy Now
You're a Big Boy Now is a 1966 film with Peter Kastner, Elizabeth Hartman, Geraldine Page, Julie Harris and Karen Black, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola based on a 1963 novel, also titled You're a Big Boy Now, by David Benedictus....
(1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a 1970 American science fiction film directed by Ted Post and written by Paul Dehn. It is the second of five films in the original Planet of the Apes series produced by Arthur P. Jacobs...
(1970), Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Chapter Two is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The plot focuses on George Schneider, a recently widowed writer who is introduced to soap opera actress Jennie Malone by his press agent brother Leo and her best friend Faye. Jennie's unhappy marriage to a football player has dissolved...
(1979), Escape from New York
Escape from New York
Escape from New York is a 1981 American science fiction action film directed and scored by John Carpenter. He co-wrote the screenplay with Nick Castle. The film is set in the near future in a crime-ridden United States that has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into a maximum security...
(1981), Regarding Henry
Regarding Henry
Regarding Henry is a 1991 American film drama starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening, directed by Mike Nichols.The screenplay by J. J. Abrams focuses on a New York City lawyer who struggles to regain his memory and recover his speech and mobility after he survives a shooting.-Plot:Ambitious,...
(1991), The Thomas Crown Affair
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999 film)
The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1999 American heist film directed by John McTiernan. The film, starring Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo and Denis Leary, is a remake of the 1968 film of the same name....
(1999), and The Time Machine
The Time Machine (2002 film)
The Time Machine is a 2002 American science fiction film loosely adapted from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells, and the 1960 film screenplay by David Duncan...
(2002).
In television, the library was featured in the "The Library
The Library (Seinfeld episode)
"The Library" is the 22nd episode of the American NBC sitcom Seinfeld. The episode was the fifth episode of the show's third season.-Plot:Jerry learns he has a fine on an unreturned library book from 1971, Tropic of Cancer...
" episode of Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, in which Cosmo Kramer
Cosmo Kramer
Cosmo Kramer, usually referred to as simply "Kramer", is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Michael Richards...
dates a librarian there, Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the situation comedy Seinfeld , which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons,...
is accosted by a library cop named Mr. Bookman for late fees, and George Costanza
George Costanza
George Louis Costanza is a character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Jason Alexander. He has variously been described as a "short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man" , "Lord of the Idiots" , and as "the greatest sitcom character of all time"...
encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its stairs. It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory," the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
Cosmos
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David...
TV series. It also appears in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler
Traveler (TV series)
Traveler is a short-lived American television series that ran from May 10, 2007 until July 18, 2007 on ABC in the United States. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television....
(as the fictional Drexler Museum of Art) as a backdrop and brief meeting place for characters and in the third season of the CW series Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl is an American young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Little, Brown and Company, a subsidiary of the Hachette Group. The series revolves around the lives and romances of the privileged teenagers at the Constance Billard School for Girls, an elite...
, and the interior was used as the interior of Unity Hall, the capitol of the fictional Kingdom of Gilboa, in the NBC series Kings
Kings (U.S. TV series)
Kings is an American television drama series which aired on NBC. The series' narrative is loosely based on the Biblical story of King David, but set in a kingdom that culturally and technologically resembles the present-day United States....
.
In literature and poetry
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a contemporary American writer.She grew up in Brooklyn, the second of three children of Jack M. Sharon, a lawyer and accountant, and Sarah Slatus Sharon; she married Harry Schwartz in 1957. She holds a BA from Barnard College, an MA from Bryn Mawr, and started work on a...
Writing on the Wall (2005) features a language researcher at NYPL who grapples with her past following the September 11 attacks. Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick
Cynthia Ozick is an American short story writer, novelist, and essayist. She is the niece of the Hebraist Abraham Regelson.-Background:Cynthia Shoshana Ozick was born in New York City, the second of two children...
's novel Heir to the Glimmering World (2004) set just prior to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, involves a scholar who has fled from Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
researching the Karaite Jews
Karaite Judaism
Karaite Judaism or Karaism is a Jewish movement characterized by the recognition of the Tanakh alone as its supreme legal authority in Halakhah, as well as in theology...
at NYPL. Matthew Reilly's
Matthew Reilly
Matthew John Reilly is an Australian action thriller writer. His novels are noted for their fast pace, twisting plots and intense action.- Biography :...
novel Contest
Contest (novel)
Contest is the self-published first novel by Australian thriller writer Matthew Reilly. In 1996, after being rejected by several Australian publishing houses, Reilly personally paid for 1000 copies of the book to be published privately under the label of 'Karanadon Entertainment', and sold them...
(1996) sets an intergalactic gladiator
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
ial fight in the NYPL, resulting in the building's total destruction. Jerome Badanes' novel The Final Opus of Leon Solomon (1985) is based on the real-life tragedy of an impoverished scholar who stole books from the Jewish Division of the Library, only to be caught and commit suicide. A lightly fictionalized portrait of the Jewish Division's first chief, Abraham Solomon Freidus, is found in a chapter of Abraham Cahan
Abraham Cahan
Abraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.-Early years:...
's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917).
Lawrence Blochman
Lawrence Blochman
Lawrence Goldtree Blochman was an American detective story writer and translator.Lawrence Blochman was born in San Diego, California to Lucien A. Blochman, a banker, and his wife Haidee Goldtree. He began writing early...
's Death Walks in Marble Halls (1942) features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer. Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.-Biography:Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained an A.B. at Vassar College, then earned an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the...
's Duplicate Keys (1984), also a murder mystery, featured an NYPL librarian who stumbles upon two bodies of people who died in 1930. Allen Kurzweil
Allen Kurzweil
Allen Kurzweil is an American novelist, children's writer, editor, essayist, and journalist. He graduated from Yale University in 1982, and has received Fulbright, Guggenheim, and NEH fellowships. He is now a Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and sits on the board of the...
's novel The Grand Complication (2001) is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are put to work finding a missing museum object. Donna Hill, who was herself an NYPL librarian in the 1950s, set her novel Catch a Brass Canary (1965) at an NYPL branch library.
Several poems involve the Library, including E. B. White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and co-authored a widely used writing guide, The...
's "A Library Lion Speaks" and "Reading Room" in Poems and Sketches of E.B. White (1981); Richard Eberhart's
Richard Eberhart
Richard Ghormley Eberhart was an American poet who published more than a dozen books of poetry and approximately twenty works in total...
"Reading Room, The New York Public Library," in Collected Poems, 1930-1986 (1988); and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
's "Library Scene, Manhattan," in How to Paint Sunlight (2001). Excerpts from several of the many memoirs and essays mentioning the New York Public Library are included in the anthology Reading Rooms (1991), including reminiscences by Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, and Kate Simon.
See also
- List of National Historic Landmarks in New York City
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 14th to 59th StreetsNational Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan from 14th to 59th StreetsThis is a list of properties and districts in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.This is intended to be a complete list of properties and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan from 14th to 59th Streets...