The trustees wanted a prime location for the new library, but no prominent sites facing Central Park were available. They eventually settled on a site between 40th and 42nd Streets because it was occupied by the obsolete Croton Reservoir. They replaced the water with a library that, as of 2015, contained an estimated 2.5 million volumes in its stacks.
The architectural firm Carrère and Hastings won the design competition in 1897. They delivered a Beaux-Arts masterpiece that opened on May 23, 1911. If you look closely at the floors today, remnants of that old reservoir still exist.
The flagship building houses nine divisions and four stories open to the public. The Main Reading Room measures 78 by 297 feet with a 52-foot-high ceiling. It was restored in 1998 and again between 2007 and 2011 with a $100 million gift from businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman.
You can see the stone lions guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance now. While the circulating division of the Main Branch moved to the Mid-Manhattan Library in 1970, the building remains the flagship for the system. It still functions as a research library in Manhattan.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Kyle McLonely
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