New York Public Library Turns 100!

This post also appears on the Bryant ark blog.

To commemorate the 100th birthday of the New York Public Library, and its central branch, the Stephen A. Schwarzman building, lets take a look back at the library through the years.

Before the Beaux-Arts building designed by architecture firm Carrère and Hastings was built, the two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets was home to the Croton Reservoir. The reservoir was torn down in 1899 to make way for the library. To read more about the demolition of the reservoir, and subsequent building of the library, click here.

Construction began in 1902, and was no small feat. When completed, the library was the largest marble structure in the country up to that time. This photo, from the NYPL's digital photo collection on the central building, shows exterior marble underway in 1905.

Photo: NYPL digital collection

The library opened to the public on May 23, 1911 with an elaborate ceremony presided over by 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft. Those flags are massive.

Photo: LOC digital collection

In 1919 the building served as a backdrop for a WWI victory parade along Fifth Avenue. Every stationary part of the building and street appears covered in shields, spears, and eagles. Shields and crossed spears often signify the defense of freedom, and eagles have long been associated with power and the U.S. I'm guessing that's their significance as decorations. If anyone knows otherwise, please email me.

Postcard:Pisark's cards

In the mid-1930s the NYPL established an outdoor reading room and called it the Bryant Park Library at Central Building. Much like our current reading room, patrons could enjoy books, magazines and newspapers outside in the park. The 1930s reading room was located on the Upper Terrace, just behind the main library building, and staff librarians were on hand to assist patrons.

Photo: BP photo collection

The library gets a scrub in 1945, seen here from 42nd Street looking east toward 40th Street. The World's Tower building on 40th Street looks huge in comparison to surrounding structures; the Empire State building is off to the right, just behind the Engineer's Club building (recently designated a landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission).

Photo: MCNY digital collection

Librarians and archivists: making research easier for 100 years and counting.

Photo: NYPL digital collection

The Bryant Park lawn (no chairs!) and rear facade of the library, May 1984.

Photo: BP photo collection

In 1988 the NYPL put two floors of additional library stacks beneath Bryant Park's lawn, seen here in a rendering by Hanna Olin, the design firm responsible for BP's redesign.

Photo: BP photo collection

Around this time last year, Improv Everywhere paid a visit to the the reading room, and re-enacted (sort of) the opening scene from Ghostbusters.

The NYPL has been hosting a number of events in celebration of the centennial, most over this past weekend. The library also has a special exhibit called "Celebrating 100 Years" on view until December 31, 2011. Here's a NY Times review.

World's Tower Building: A 40th Street Gothic High-Rise in the Middle of Midtown Art Deco-land

A version of this post also appears on the Bryant Park blog.

Recently, there was shift of offices here at work. I went from sitting in an open area, sort of a combo - cubicle/bullpen setting, to a room with four walls, a door, and two windows that actually open (rare for a midtown office building).  Being able to somewhat control light and temperature levels and tell when it's dark outside is very nice. Like many working archivists, most of my former jobs took place in dreary basement-level rooms with poor air circulation (great when you are sorting through 30 year-old Thermofaxes layered in dust, or rotting photographs reeking of developing fixer solution) and no natural light. Now, I look out the window and see this building.

Photo: A. Kumer

Photo: A. Kumer

The World's Tower, at 110 West 40th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, has 30 above-ground levels, and a glazed terra cotta facade. When this Neo-Gothic building was completed in 1913, it was the tallest of its kind, on an extremely narrow, 50 foot-wide footprint, and made a striking impression in mid-town Manhattan.


Photo: MCNY

The architecture firm, Buchman & Fox, was commissioned by budding real estate magnate Edward W. Browning. According to New York Times Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray, Browning was eccentric, throughout his life, steadily acquiring adoptive daughters (and marrying one), as well as skinny mid-block high-rises. You can also see part of the Empire (Eltinge) theater in the bottom right, with Billie Burke (later to play Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz) on the marquee.


Photo: BPC Collection

Behold, midtown, more or less as we know it now. The above photograph, taken in 1935, and looking south-west from above and across Bryant Park, shows numerous high-rise buildings surrounding the Tower. The Union Dime Savings Bank building is in the lower right of the above photograph, and Bryant Park is just west, outside the bottom frame of the photograph.

**Note: The eccentric Browning link may not work w/o a NYT login. It's worth it though, so maybe get one and read the article anyway. Sorry!

Union Dime: Saved Dimes Turn into Prime Real Estate

In 1859, a group of thirty four business men founded and chartered a mutual savings bank. They named it Union Dime Savings Institute to show solidarity with the Federal Union as well as remind people that “dimes saved increased to dollars.”  They were also the first banking institution to use the word "Dime" in its title, though others soon followed. The bank first opened a modest office at Canal and Varick Streets. In 1867, they moved their headquarters to Canal and Laight Streets, and in 1876, to 32nd and Broadway:



photo: NYPL Digital Collection



This six-story white marble building was built in 1874, and in October of that year, Union Dime Savings Institute bought the title of the property from Rudolph A. Witthaus, for $275,000, nearly $70 per square foot. This was considered a fair amount of money for a neighborhood that hadn't quite achieved its desirable reputation.

Greeley Square, c. 1908, with the elevated 6th Avenue train station on the right.

The front façade faced Greeley Square and 32nd Street, and the building housed the Union Dime offices as well as apartments on its upper floors.  The bank remained there for the next 34 years before moving uptown eight blocks to the corner of 40^th Street and 6^th Avenue. The old building at 32^nd sold for a record high price of $1,000,000, or, about $250 a square foot. Aside from making news for its price tag, the deal aroused interest because the purchasers, City Investing Company, didn’t own any adjacent property, or have any plans for the space or building, suggesting to many, an intention to flip the property for a higher price.  

At around the turn of the century, the 34^th Street district was going through a massive transition. Improvements in mass transit led to the arrival of retail giants Macy’s, whose flagship store was built in 1901-1902, and Gimbels (1910).  The 6^th Avenue elevated train had been operating since 1878, but the early 1900s also saw the addition of the “Hudson Tubes” (New Jersey PATH train), and the completion of Pennsylvania Station in 1910. Additionally, the Hotel Martinique on 32^nd Street and Broadway finished its third phase of completion in 1910-1911, rounding out the district as a new hub for retail, transportation, and hospitality.

Regardless of the rise of the 34th Street district, in 1908, Union Dime purchased the corner lot on 40^th Street and 6^th Avenue, across from Bryant Park, for $1,000,000. (Many also know the block between 5th and 6th Aves on 40th Street as the longtime home of the Tesla Society, named after the inventor of wireless communication and alternating current electricity, Nikola Tesla.) Five row houses were demolished to make room for what The Independent referred to as “one of the most imposing banking edifices in the city” (vol. 68, p. 664). The Italian Renaissance building was designed by architect Alfred Taylor, and featured a 96 x 85 foot main banking room with 48 ft. tall ceilings.

View from Bryant Park (known then as Reservoir Square) looking towards 6th Ave. 40th Street is along the left. Photo, NYPL



View of the South side of the Union Dime building on 40th Street, looking east toward the park and the NYPL building. Photo, NYPL



I'm not sure when this building was torn down, but it was still there in the 1930s (upper left, just behind the 6th Avenue elevated train line):

And, in the 1950s, when this subway map was published and distributed by Union Dime:

It was probably torn down sometime in the mid-1950s, to make way for a 34-story office building designed by Kahn and Jacobs, and Sydney Goldstone. The building was completed in 1957, and is still there, looking much the same as it did in 1959, when a photo of it was published on the cover of Union Dime's 100th Anniversary booklet.

**Special thanks to Mr. Boyd Lewis at Union Dime, Inc. for his insight and interest, and a copy of the Union Dime 1959 yearbook.

The New York Public Library Lays Its Cornerstone

This post also appears on the Bryant Park blog, and was posted on November 10, 2010, the same day it should have been also posted here. (oops. vacation brain . . . )

On November 10, 1902, a hundred and eight years ago (and twelve days), the first cornerstone of the New York Public Library's Central Building was laid. One of New York City's architectural treasures, the NYPL borders Bryant Park on the east, along Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 40th Streets. It is also the former location of the Croton Distributing Reservoir.



                A pedestrian level view of the Croton Distributing Reservoir at the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Ave.                        Photo: NYPL Digital Gallery



Overview of the reservoir, seen from the corner of Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street, 1900. Photo: NYPL Digital Gallery

Plans for the formation of a grand public library began in the late 1800s, when a group of prominent New York citizens agreed that the city, growing rapidly in population and international importance, needed a library. The site of the Croton Reservoir was chosen as the location, and a competition was announced for the building's design. The winning architects, John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings of architecture firm Carrere and Hastings, submitted a Beaux-Arts proposal, with a raised terrace at the rear of the building, and two comfort stations along the east end of neighboring Bryant Park (then called Reservoir Square).




Cornerstone laying, 1902. Photo: NYPL Digital Collection



View of the west facade of the library during construction, 1903. Photo: NYPL Digital Collection





View from the construction site of the NYPL. Bryant Park, then called Reservoir Square, can be seen on the left, 1906. Photo: NYPL Digital Collection

It was the largest marble structure ever attempted in the United States, and took nine years to complete, with a cost totaling over nine million dollars. In 1906, the roof of the building was completed, and designers set to work for five additional years on the interior. Dr. John Shaw Billings, the first director of the New York Public Library, created a plan for an enormous reading room, seven floors of stacks, and an efficient retrieval system.



Interior construction, 1909. Photo: NYPL Digital Gallery



Carrere and Hastings furniture plans. Image: NYPL Digital Gallery



The main branch of the New York Public Library opened to the public on May 23, 1911.


Postcard of the NYPL showing the north and east facades. Postcard: Bryant Park Corporation / 34th Street Partnership



To read more about the history of the NYPL and its buildings, click here, and to search though historic photos on the NYPL's digital gallery, look here.



Facades to Pedestals

In the middle of midtown shopping and tourist chaos, at 34th Street, where Broadway and 6th Avenue meet, is a small park maintained by one of my employers, the 34th Street Partnership, called Herald Square. This small triangle of land was named after the New York Herald, a daily newspaper established in 1835 by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. (1795-1872). Known primarily for its sensationalistic coverage of crime and scandal, as well as a massive national circulation, the Herald set up its headquarters at the north end of this small green space in 1894, in a two story arcaded building designed by architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White.

postcard from around 1898 showing the Herald building, as well as the Dodge monument

The ornate building featured several bronze owls mounted along the façade as well as statues of Minerva and two bell-ringing blacksmiths, nicknamed “Stuff and Guff” or “Gog and Magog.”

At this time, the James Earle Dodge monument, now in Bryant Park, occupied a stately position in front of the Herald building. More on him later . . .

Minerva on top of the Herald, and later, as part of the James Gordon Bennett monument

In 1918, the Herald moved its offices to 42nd street, and three years later, the statues were removed from the building’s façade. They went into the possession of William Dewart, then proprietor of the New York Sun. Years later, in 1940, when Herald Square underwent a massive renovation, the statues were given to the city on permanent loan and placed in a Milford granite pedestal in Herald Square Park. The pedestal, designed by architect Aymar Emburry II, along with the statues from the Herald building make up a monument to James Gordon Bennett. The dedication ceremony was held on November 19, 1940.

Before and After contrast