It was raining today and so we thought it a perfect day to take the NY Public Library Tour. Even though the City of New York donated the land on which the Main Branch of the Library stands and continues to maintain the building, the term ‘public’ here in the US usually means provided by a private benefactor/s ‘for the public’ not ‘by the public authorities’ as would be the case in Australia.
In the old days there was a reservoir here at 42nd Street but today the base of the old Croton Reservoir’s thick stone walls just serve to provide the foundation for the library. Many of the wealthy ‘old New York’ families had, by te turn of the century developed extensive private libraries and it was by the merger in 1912 of two of these, the Lennox and Astor libraries, that the foundations of the NYPL’s present wonderful of collection was laid.
If knowledge is power then the Stephen A. Schwarzman’s library must be a very empowering place. One can certainly feel the power of the book as one walks past the two lions that guard the entrance and then again as one walks up the huge marble staircase and into the mighty all marble Astor Hall. It was once a standing joke that the two lions were called Astor and Lennox but as someone rather joyfully pointed out, both lions were male and so the names were no longer valid. Yet another wit suggested that Nancy Astor was strong enough a character to carry it off regardless! 
During the Depression Mayor LaGuardia renamed them Patience and Fortitude (because he said that those two qualities were the ones that best exemplified New Yorkers) and the problem was resolved. And while we are talking about names for things, how did the NYPL Main Branch come to be named after Stephen Schwarzman? As a result of a large donation of money … naturally! Schwarzman made a $100 million donation in 2008, and not long after the Main Branch became the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
To be fair, the idea was apparently the library’s, not Schwarzman’s, but the conservative-leaning (if not conservative-spending) hedge-fund billionaire didn’t insist on a discreet plaque in the lobby, either. His name is set in stone on either side of the Fifth Avenue entrance, on an engraved plaque inside the door, and in case you miss any of those, it’s also on engraved above the 42nd Street entrance. After dark, each is lit up by its own spotlight. You just gotta love this town!
Our tour guide claimed that the New York Public Library has something in its collection to both please and offend everyone, since the collection stored here has 300 languages represented and is not censored. For example there are Klu Klux Klan hoods and crosses stored here and their appearance at a recent display ‘ruffled some politically correct feathers’.
Essentially this library (which technically consists of the Mian branch and 86 ‘satellite’ branches) serves Manhattan, the Bronx and New Jersey. It is largely a research library although Southport is the newest public space and caters for technology research and education. The library does not serve Queens or Brooklyn. The reason for this is purely historical. The five boroughs were not amalgamated at the time of the library’s establishment and both Queens and Brooklyn already had their own public libraries.
The building used to house many of the major publishers eg Macmillan, Hearst and McGraw Hill and today many of the reading rooms display paintings of them in their ‘heyday’. There is also the Lionel Pincas and Princess Firyal map division and on the second floor gallery exhibitions eg the drawings of Mary Cassatt are currently on display. On the second floor there is also the Pforzheiner collection for English romantic literature which houses works by Shelley and Lewis Carroll and further down the corridor is the McGraw Rotunda, the Edna Barnes Salomon reading room and the Bill Blass public catalogue room. This is a seriously big place!
When wandering through the reading rooms it is clear to see that NYC is a ‘Mac’ town, but significant non-digital items remain on display, including a copy of the Gutenburg bible, Thomas Jefferson’s original Declaration of Independence (complete with hand written changes) and the only copy of Columbus letter to Queen Isabella in Spanish announcing his claiming of the Americas for Spain. There are also photos of Lincoln's cabin and Homus Wagner’s famous baseball card – made famous because the card was pulled from circulation because he didn't want to encourage children to smoke.
Because of their innovative (for its time) use of pneumatic tubes for transporting books requests from readers to the stacks the New York Public Library became the only library in the world to appear on the cover of the Scientific American Magazine (a fact of which they still seem inordinately proud). Movies shot here include ‘Sex and the City’ and the ‘Thomas Crown Affair’.
In the children’s library we found a treasure - the original Winnie-the-Pooh set of toy animals (Winnie, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Tigger) that were purchased by A. A. Milne in Harrods (from 1920 -1922) and given to his son Christopher Robin Milne. The toys were brought to the US in 1947 as part of a promotional tour for the Winnie-the-Pooh series of books and remained here with the publishers until 1987 when they donated the toys to The New York Public Library.
Christopher Robin lost Roo and so this toy was not included in the tour. Who knew they were here? Not I. And who is that other character less familiar to us that is present under the glass? As it turns out in ‘Return to Hundred Acre Wood’ we are introduced to a rather snobby, pearl necklace wearing otter called Lottie. She is the sixth toy in the case.
After leaving the library with a full brain and camera, we walked across to a movie theatre on 60th and 3rd to see the political action thriller ‘The Company You Keep’. It was produced and directed by Robert Redford who starred in it along with Shai LeBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie and Nick Nolte. Good movie – enjoyed it immensely. We also enjoyed the trailers for 42 (The Jackie Robinson Story) and Baz Lurhmann’s new film: ‘The Great Gatsby’, so now we have added them to our ever lengthening list of ‘things to see and do’ before we leave NYC.
As we were walking home after the movie I worked out, even though I didn’t get ‘the memo’, that today is the first day that all the ‘fashion mavens’ of NYC have agreed to wear their Burberry quilted jackets. Once I knew about the memo it was easy to see – they were everywhere!
As an interesting experiment in social conditioning I convinced Peter that I should have one of these jackets. So we walked across the road to Bloomingdales, gave the lady our little red card and she gave me a jacket – how easy was that? It fitted nicely and was warm.
When I got home I looked in the mirror and it looked nice, but there was nothing on the label that could prepare me for how I would feel in the morning. (It was such a great feeling being part of the ‘in’ crowd.) Perhaps it had been in the memo and I hadn’t read it, since I wasn’t officially sent a copy?
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