NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY RENOVATION PLANS RELEASED

In the 10 months since the New York Public Library announced plans for a $300 million renovation of its Fifth Avenue flagship building, scholars and writers have accused the library of abandoning its commitment to research and questioned how the circulating library across the street could be shoehorned into a treasured landmark.

But something crucial has been missing from this debate: what the transformed library will actually look like. On Wednesday, that will become clear when the library unveils the design by the British architect Norman Foster. Using space at the back of the building now occupied by seven floors of stacks, Mr. Foster has essentially created a major new contemporary library within Carrère & Hastings’s neo-Classical one.

The plans call for opening the building’s central axis from the Fifth Avenue entrance through to the Bryant Park side, where there will be a four-level atrium, with bookshelves, sitting areas and desks, that will replace the stacks space, which is now closed to the public. For the first time since the library was completed in 1911, patrons will be able to view Bryant Park through the tall, narrow windows on the ground floor.

“We need to be respectful of the beloved, iconic building and to create a new inspiring space,” Anthony W. Marx, the library’s president, said in an interview in his office in the Fifth Avenue building. “At a time when people wonder about the future of libraries, we’re going to create the greatest library the world has ever seen.”

The plan initially provoked controversy because the library had proposed moving most of the books in the stacks into storage in New Jersey to make room for the new circulating library. Scholars and writers protested that the renovation would result in long waits to retrieve the off-site books and diminish the library’s role as a leading reference center. The money, they argued, should be directed instead toward rejuvenating dilapidated branch libraries.

In response, the library recently revised its plan with the help of an $8 million donation to create more space for books beneath the new circulating library so that 3.3 million of the research library’s 4.5 million volumes will remain on site.

To read the complete article, see: After Criticism, Public Library Offers Peek at Renovation Plans (www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/arts/design/new-york-public-library
-offers-peek-at-renovation.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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