History

The New York Public Library was created in 1895 through the consolidation of two private collections: the Astor Library (1849, John Jacob Astor’s bequest) and the Lenox Library (1870, James Lenox’s collection). A site on Fifth Avenue occupied by the former Croton Reservoir was donated by the City of New York; a $5.2 million grant from former governor Samuel Tilden’s estate funded the construction. The design competition was won by Carrère and Hastings, who had trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and worked for McKim, Mead & White before establishing their own practice. Construction began in 1902; the building opened in 1911 after nine years of work.

The building’s programme was explicitly democratic: a research library that anyone could enter without payment or credential. Andrew Carnegie, who had just funded 65 branch libraries across New York’s boroughs, attended the 1911 opening. The collections were immediately accessible to the public; writers from Trotsky (who researched The History of the Russian Revolution in the reading rooms during his 1917 exile in New York) to E.L. Doctorow have worked here. The stacks, originally occupying seven floors of the building’s plinth, held approximately 700 miles of shelving at opening; books were delivered to readers via a pneumatic tube system that still exists beneath the floor.

A comprehensive restoration of the Rose Main Reading Room, completed in 2016 after a two-year closure, repaired water damage to the 1940s ceiling paintings by Edward Laning and returned the room’s original warmth. The building remains a free, unrestricted public space; the lions Patience and Fortitude — named by Mayor La Guardia during the Depression as qualities New Yorkers would need — continue to flank the entrance on Fifth Avenue.