New York Public Library (Schwarzman Building)
Patience and Fortitude’s marble palace – the Rose Reading Room’s two football fields of light, free to every reader since 1911.
At a glance
- Type
- Public research library
- Period
- 1902-1911
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- Location
- Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, USA
- Coordinates
- 40.7532, -73.9822
- Architects
- Carrère and Hastings; lions by E. C. Potter
Overview
Carrère and Hastings won America’s Beaux-Arts crown with the library opened 1911 on the old reservoir’s site: Vermont marble fronted by the lions LaGuardia named Patience and Fortitude, rising to the Rose Main Reading Room – 90 metres of carved-cloud ceiling over oak tables where anyone, cardless, may summon the collection’s millions. Astor and Lenox’s merged riches made the people’s palace.
History
The Croton reservoir’s walls came down for learning’s temple; writers from singer-waiters to Nobelists drafted under the rosettes (the room renamed for Rose benefactors, restored 2016 with each cloud re-gilt). Treasures – Gutenberg, Washington’s farewell draft, the actual Winnie-the-Pooh toys – hold court in the exhibitions.
Architecture and Design
Astor Hall’s white marble stair, the McGraw rotunda’s murals, and the catalogue room’s brass funnel readers to the third-floor nave; stacks beneath Bryant Park extend miles. The lions’ seasonal wreaths mark New York’s calendar.
Cultural significance
The NYPL is democratic knowledge’s flagship – free access at imperial scale – and cinema’s library of record from Ghostbusters to The Day After Tomorrow.
Visiting today
Free entry daily; docent tours and the Polonsky treasures exhibition orient. Bryant Park’s lawn behind serves the pause.
Getting there
Grand Central and Times Square subway hubs flank the block; the 7 train’s Fifth Avenue stop opens at the lions.
Sources and resources
Find it on the map
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