Norman Foster Reworks the New York Public Library
(Inset) Periodicals room, michelle via flickr; Library exterior with Astor and Lenox carvings in the entablature,
stephs photos via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
The New York Public Library has announced that architect Norman Foster has won the
design competition for the redo of the library's home on 5th Avenue. According the library's press release, Foster + Partners will "transform" the Carrere & Hastings designed building and turn it "into the world's largest comprehensive library open to the public." The building has served as a research facility for over 40 years and will become a circulating library with "new reading rooms and open shelf circulating collections overlooking Bryant Park." The new space will be carved out of seven levels of stacks that have been located beneath the majestic Rose Reading Room since the building opened in 1911. "This will enable vast spaces that were formerly inaccessible to the public to be used to create a multi-level, light-filled new library that overlooks the park." It is one of the largest changes to the library since it's founding when the Astor and Lenox Libraries joined together with the Tilden Trust, to create New York's free public-lending system.
(Inset) Public Theater, nybeyondsight.org /Artwork: designslinger]
Before John Jacob Astor died in 1848, he was working with book collector and librarian
Joseph Cogswell to create a public library. Soon after Astor's death, Cogswell got together with other members of the Astor Trust, which included author Washington Irving, to choose a location where they could build a facility to house the book collection. They picked a site on Layfayette Street in lower Manhattan and the building, by architect Alexander Saeltzer, opened in 1854. To enter the library, a pass (issued by staff librarians) was required. Once you got inside, you had to have time to spend there to read, since books were not loaned out. This was a period in history when most New Yorkers worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and with no Sunday hours, the policy was considered exclusionary. Yet even with it's restrictions the library was popular, and in 1859 an addition was built to the north, with a final extension added in 1881. When you visit Lafayette Street today, the exterior still looks very much like it did in the 1880s and is now the home of Joseph Papp's Public Theater.
via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
James Lenox was the son of a wealthy Scottish-born New Yorker who inherited a lot of
money, as well as a large farm from his father. The farm made up several acres of the Upper East side around the 70s, between 5th and Madison Avenues. James was a book collector and decided in 1870 to open his rare and esoteric collection to scholars. He asked architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a library building that Lenox would construct on a piece of the old farm on 5th Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets. Construction began in 1871 and the first rooms finally opened in 1877. But, it wasn't until 1882 that the book collection itself was made accessible to scholars, who had to obtain admission cards for entry. Lenox had died in 1880, and by 1895 the Lenox trustees decided to join with the Astor trustees and the executors of the Tilden Trust, to create a public free-lending library system. None of the current buildings were large enough to house all the materials of the combined collections, so the site of the Croton Reservoir at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street was chosen to build a new facility. The Lenox building was torn down and replaced by the home of financier Henry Clay Frick in 1914. Today the residence, designed by Thomas Hastings of Carrere & Hastings, is the home of the Frick Collection, a museum open to the public which gives you an insiders view of how a scion of industry lived in the early 20th century.
When the public library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private Astor,
Lenox and Tilden Trusts, it meant that the general public would have access to thousands upon thousands of books for the first time in New York's history. When the 7 floors of closed stacks are transformed by Foster and open in 2013, it will continue a tradition that began over a century ago.
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