New York Public Library Reading Room. Image Credit: NYPL.
UPDATE: Landmarks voted to designate the interior at its meeting August 8, 2017. Commissioner Adi Shamir-Baron spoke of the “rare condition of two block’s worth of interior space,” with 50-foor ceilings. She said the interiors remind us of the meaning of civic space, as a place that “honors and elevates the spirit of the individual and the collective.”
Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan stated that designation as an imperative step in Landmarks’ mission, that would preserve and protect an important part of one of the “City’s finest public civic institutions.” She thanked the New York Public Library’s leadership for their stewardship of the space.
Commissioners voted unanimously to designate the individual landmark.
Original article below:
If designated, reading and catalog rooms would join New York Public Library Building exterior, and Main Lobby and other interiors, as City landmarks. On June 6, 2016, Landmarks voted to add the Main Reading and Catalog Room of the at 476 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan to its calendar, officially commencing the process for designation as a potential interior City landmark. The exterior of the building, as well as the Main Lobby, third floor central hall, and two staircases, are individual and interior landmarks already. The firm of Carrere & Hastings won an architectural competition to design the Library in 1897, with a Beaux-Arts plan. The library opened to the public in 1911.
