The New York Public Library, c1950s

 

NY1188

1905, Public Library, New York, New York

[LIB11051] This looks like an architectural model for the library. As the sender says, "It is a grand one inside."

1926, Library, Manhattan, New York City, New York

[LIB10995] This is an original 1926 halftone print of pigeon feeders outside of the New York Public Library.

1943 The Frick Art Reference Library, New York, New York

[LIB4402] - The Frick Art Reference Library was founded in 1920 to serve “adults with a serious interest in art,” among them scholars, art professionals, collectors, and students. The Library’s book and photograph research collections relate chiefly to paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints from the fourth to the mid-twentieth centuries by European and American artists. Known internationally for its rich holdings of auction and exhibition catalogs, the Library is a leading site for collecting and provenance research. Archival materials and special collections augment the research collections with documents pertaining to the history of collecting art in America and of Henry Clay Frick’s collecting in particular. [From the website]

New York Public Library, New York City, Manhattan

A nice hi-def video showing the great reading room of the New York Public Library.

The following information is from the NYPL website: The Deborah, Jonathan F. P., Samuel Priest, and Adam R. Rose Main Reading Room is a majestic public space, measuring 78 feet by 297 feet—roughly the length of two city blocks—and weaving together Old World architectural elegance with modern technology. The award-wining restoration of this room was completed in 1998, thanks to a fifteen million-dollar gift from Library trustee Sandra Priest Rose and Frederick Phineas Rose, who renamed the room in honor of their children.

Here, patrons can read or study at long oak tables lit by elegant bronze lamps, beneath fifty-two foot tall ceilings decorated by dramatic murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds. Since the General Research Division’s opening day on May 23, 1911, vast numbers of people have entered the main reading room. Literary figures such as Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, E. L. Doctorow, and Alfred Kazin have cited the division as a major resource for their work. In one of his memoirs, New York Jew, Kazin described his youthful impression of the reading room: “There was something about the . . . light falling through the great tall windows, the sun burning smooth the tops of the golden tables as if they had been freshly painted—that made me restless with the need to grab up every book, press into every single mind right there on the open shelves.”

Library, New York City 1908 Vintage

This reproduction is available from my Zazzle store!

Library, New York City 1908 Vintage by markomundo
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