New York Public Library
The New York Public Library’s main branch (also known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) is a familiar landmark in Manhattan. Located on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, it’s the huge marble building with two majestic stone lions out front. It’s where Paul told Holly that he loves her in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s where Carrie’s wedding to Mr. Big didn’t happen in Sex and the City: The Movie. It’s iconic, and I’ve always been curious about it.
The library offers free docent-led tours twice a day, and I reserved my ticket online in advance. There were twenty people in our tour group, including visitors from South America and Australia. Our docent had been volunteering at the library for over twenty years! It was fun being able to visit areas of the library that normally for researchers only.
The library was built during the Gilded Age, on prime land donated by the city, with collections and funding from wealthy civic-minded New Yorkers. The Beaux Arts exterior is covered with four acres of white Vermont marble. Inside, there are gorgeous details on every floor, wall and ceiling.
The Main Branch is a research library, which means that books and other items from the collections must remain onsite. Unlike circulating libraries, you can’t borrow a book and take it home. And you can’t browse for books and pull them from the shelves yourself. Instead, you have to look them up in the (online) catalog, submit a call slip, and wait for them to be retrieved and delivered by a conveyor system that looks like a little red train.
From its grand opening in 1911, this magnificent library has always been free and open to the public. All are welcome here. It is a remarkable place that New Yorkers can rightfully be proud of.
Fun Facts
The marble lions were named Patience and Fortitude by Mayor Fiorella Laguardia in the 1930’s.
Andy Warhol repeatedly borrowed items from the Picture Collection - the only one in the Main Branch which allows items to be checked out - but didn't return them. (Some were found at the Andy Warhol Museum.)
The Rose Main Reading Room is nearly 300 feet long and more than 50 feet high, but there are no columns! The room is supported by seven tiers of steel and cast iron book stacks beneath.
The stacks beneath the Rose Main Reading Room are now empty. Instead, about 3.5 million books are stored under Bryant Park, adjacent to the library building.
The decorative ceilings look like carved wood, but are really painted plaster (with one exception - the ground floor exhibit hall).
The interior walls of the ground floor corridors are clad in Indian marble, from the same quarries as the marble used to build the Taj Mahal.
Top Tips
If you are not a researcher and want to use the Rose Main Reading Room, just inform them you are there for “quiet study.”
To see remnants of the 19th century reservoir that once supplied drinking water to New York City and was torn down to build the library, go to the gift shop entrance and look down from the little bridge to see the old granite walls.
The “Treasures” exhibit on the ground floor of the Main Branch has a remarkable selection of museum-worthy historical artifacts from the NYPL’s collections. It’s amazing, and it’s absolutely FREE!
