Growing Pains

Every old city library in our young country has had them, they’re painful and unpleasant but impossible to ignore... growing pains.  Of course it would be unrealistic to think that structures build a century (or more) ago could continue to meet the information needs of today’s population but choosing to raze a historic library is not, and should not, be an easy decision.  

When a library has more books in storage than on the shelf, decision time has arrived.  There are many factors to consider:  the condition of the building, the cost of renovation, the cost of new construction, the site, the importance of the building and the support of the community.   Some cities make a logical decision to demolish and start over, and some create stunning statements for their cities and patrons (see Seattle).  Other cities choose to preserve their history and build an addition onto the existing libraries, which can be architecturally challenging but, if done well, the best of both worlds.  In New York City they have added on to the original building and used book annexes to handle their phenomenal growth.

In 1910 the population of New York City was 4.7 million.  According to census, by the year 2010 it had ballooned to 8.3 million, a pretty major jump.  Now I know that not everyone loves or uses the library in NYC but I also know that each week 350,000 patrons do stop by one of the NYPL branches, and they all need a place to sit and read.  Well, not really, but they do need access to the 20 million books in the library’s collection (in 1911 the library only had a million items).

To accommodate the first wave of this explosion in the 1970s, the New York Public Library came up with some creative solutions, none of which included a new main library.  The NYPL is a monument in and of itself, and a National Historic Landmark - which establishes it as a place of historic significance and provides it with a certain amount of protection.  Instead of building up or out the library decided to go down.

NYPL is famous for the seven floors of stacks below the reading room which was the brainstorm of Dr. John Shaw Billings, the first library director, way back in 1900.  In order to get a book, patrons fill out a request slip and it is swooshed up them (this was pretty revolutionary in the early 1900s).  But as the collection grew there was a greater need for shelf space so the library made like a mole and tunneled 62 feet under Bryant Park, eventually digging out an additional 125,000 square feet and adding  84 miles of shelf space .  

Susan Anderson’s 1987 article in the NYT fills in some of the details. Before the expansion the books in the humanities and social sciences collection were split up and some were stored in the annex on 43rd Street and 11th Avenue.  The new space reunited the collection for the time but because the library acquires 150,000 new books a year, it would clearly not last forever.  The previous chairman of the library and Bryant Park, Andrew Haiskell, said that when the library grew too big for its britches again it would be “someone else’s problem” which turned out to be exactly what happened.  During the years of construction Bryant Park was closed for the 2 ½ years of construction work.  When the space was complete, about 6 feet of soil was added to the roof, a little grass was planted and the park was back in business.  

Sadly, the miles of stacks are closed to the public with he exception of a few special days.  And even though Ghostbuster wasn’t actually filmed there (they went to LA instead!), I can imagine the eerie feeling of being surrounded by miles of identical rows of books and no natural light,  enough to make anyone a little nervous...personally I rather sit up in the Rose Room, under billowing clouds, and wait for my book to be swooshed up to me.