Place

New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

The New York Public Library's marble Fifth Avenue research library combines Beaux-Arts ceremonial rooms, vast humanities collections and the Rose Main Reading Room.

City guideMidtown East

New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in New York City — www.nypl.org/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Public_Library_Main_Branch The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, more widely known as the Main Branch or simply as "the New York Public Library," is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system and a prominent historic landmark in Midtown Manhattan. The branch, opened in 1911, is one of four research libraries in the library system. It is located on Fifth Avenue at its intersection with 42nd Street. The Library's famous Rose Main Reading Room (Room 315) is a majestic 78 feet (23.8 m) wide and 297 feet (90.5 m) long, with 52-foot (15.8 m) high ceilings. The room is lined with thousands of reference works on open shelves along the floor level and along the balcony, lit by massive windows and grand chandeliers, and furnished with sturdy wood tables, comfortable chairs, and brass lamps. It is also equipped with computers providing access to library collections and the Internet as well as docking facilities for laptops. Readers study books brought to them from the library's closed stacks. There are special rooms for notable authors and scholars, many of whom have done important research and writing at the Library. But the Library has always been about more than scholars; during the Great Depression, many ordinary people, out of work, used the Library to improve their lot in life, as they still do. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 The building Bronze bust of John Merwen Carrère, Carrère and Hastings, architects of the New York Public Library Marble on the library building is about three feet thick, and the building is marble and brick all the way through. The exterior is 20,000 blocks of stone, each one numbered in preparation for a renovation announced in 2007. It stretches 390 feet along Fifth Avenue. Two stone lions lie at either side of the stairway to the entrance. The famous lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter. Their original names, "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox" (in honor of the library's founders) were transformed into Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (although both lions are male), and in the 1930s they were nicknamed "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who chose the names because he felt that the citizens of New York would need to possess these qualities to see themselves through the Great Depression. Patience is on the south side (the left as one faces the main entrance) and Fortitude on the north. Two bronze flagpole bases, sculpted by Raffaele Menconi to a sketch by Thomas Hastings (1912) and cast at Tiffany Studios exemplify the attention to detail in the structure's fittings Before the end pavilions are flagpoles, whose sculpted bronze bases designed by Thomas Hastings in 1912 were realized by the sculptor Raffaele Menconi, who often worked closely with New York architects of the Beaux-Arts generation and had a deft command of the 16th century Italian Mannerist classical idiom that was required by Hasting's design. The bronzes were cast at Tiffany Studios in Long Island City. They were rededicated to New York's former Reform mayor, John Purroy Mitchell. La New York Public Library (NYPL) est l'une des plus importantes bibliothèques américaines. Son bâtiment principal est situé sur l'île de Manhattan, à New York, le long de la 5e avenue. Il a été construit par le cabinet Carrere and Hastings. Aujourd'hui, sa dotation (ou endowment) est d'environ 462 millions de dollars1. Sa directrice est actuellement Elisabeth Rohatyn, épouse de Felix Rohatyn. Collections Actuellement, la bibliothèque publique de la ville de New York comporte 89 bibliothèques : 4 bibliothèques de recherche sans prêt, 4 bibliothèques de prêt principales, 1 bibliothèque pour les aveugles et personnes handicapées, et 77 bibliothèques locales dans les 3 quartiers desservis. Toutes sont gratuites. En 2007, les collections de recherche comptaient près de 44 millions de documents, dont près de 16 millions de livres. Les bibliothèques locales comptaient plus de 7 millions de documents, dont plus de 4 millions de livres. Au total, les collections se montent à plus de 50 millions de documents, dont plus de 20 millions de livres, un nombre qui n'est dépassé que par la bibliothèque du Congrès et la British Library.(vincent desjardins) from Paris, France / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Why visit

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is the New York Public Library's landmark research library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Carrère and Hastings designed the Beaux-Arts building on the former Croton Reservoir site; it opened in 1911 after sixteen years of design and construction, guarded by the marble lions Patience and Fortitude.

What to see

A central procession leads from the white-marble Astor Hall through decorated corridors and catalog spaces to the Rose Main Reading Room. Nearly 300 feet long and 51 feet high, the column-free room pairs oak tables and chandeliers with arched windows and ceiling murals that create the illusion of an open sky.

Plan your visit

The building houses non-circulating humanities and social-science research collections, historic stacks and exhibition galleries, including the permanent display of library treasures. Millions of volumes remain onsite in storage extending beneath Bryant Park, connecting the ceremonial public rooms above with a large working system for retrieving research material.

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References used by Irhal's editors to verify this page.

Last editorial review: 2026-07-01

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