If you’ve never been to New York City before, the most you might know about the New York Pubic Library is what you gleamed from watching the 1981 comedy classic Ghostbusters.  In that film, three intrepid ghost hunters enter the library in search of poltergeists, books fly off shelves, people run, and the actors end up in a lot of protoplasmic slime.  If you’re traveling to New York, though, you’ll want to visit this famous building (and its books) — just don’t expect the ghosts to show.

You’ll find this grand library in Midtown, on Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Street.  Millions each year come through these doors and about 1.8 million people carry New York library cards.  The library was built in the early part of the Twentieth Century, the cornerstone laid in 1902 and the doors opened to the public in 1911.  In the intervening nine years, architects planned, for its time, the largest marble Beaux Arts building ever tried in the United States.  The building cost nine million dollars.  That’s nine million dollars in the early part of the Twentieth Century.   The famed lion statues that sit outside the museum are made from pink Tennessee marble, which I presume came out of Knoxville (also known as the Marble City).  On that first day in 1911, if you hate crowds, you may not have wished to check out a book: Fifty thousand visitors arrived for the library’s first day of business.

Today, the library’s size is diverse holdings make this one of the best and most-praised libraries on the planet.  There are collection here in the tens of millions, and a few of the holdings are absolutely priceless in their historical value, such as a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and an actual manuscript copy of Thomas Jefferson’s first tries at would would later become known as The Declaration of Independence.  If I were traveling to New York, I’d first arrange for a suite, then head on over to the library and get some reading done!

A Library in New York is a post from: Kiss Java

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2. Some Other Museums in New York
3. Cultured Out in New York