If You Build It They Will Come

By 1896 the New York Public Library had piles of money, a great plan, a passionate president but no building.  Talk about a big project...this one was a doozy.  Two blocks along 5th Avenue, the previous site of the Croton Reservoir, were picked out for the library site and Dr. John Shaw Billings was chosen as the library director (you can read the history of the reservoir site and Bryant Park in the entry Potter’s Field to Harry Potter).  


Billings, like Bigelow, was a man with a plan.  If you’re looking for a definition for “overachiever”, read about Billings in Wikipedia, it’s making me feel like a real slacker.  Here are the highlights...before Billings accepted the job of building and directing the NYPL he developed the Surgeon General’s Library that eventually became the National Library of Medicine.  He did that because he was also a surgeon who served as a medical inspector in the Civil War.  In his spare time, he was a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and help design part of John Hopkins Hospital.  When he arrived in NY in 1896,  he sketched a plan for the library on a scrap of paper which became an “early blueprint” for the building.  Billings was the one who made the call for the giant reading room,with floors of book stacks beneath it and the famous speedy book ‘delivery system’.  All he needed was an architect, so an open competition was held. 


The prize went to the partnership of John Carrere and Thomas Hastings.  The pair met at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris in 1880 and continued their friendship stateside as employees of the famous firm McKim, Mead and White (the prestigious firm that designed BPL in 1888-92).  After a few years they branched out on their own and began, Carrere & Hastings.  Not surprisingly Carrere and Hasting designed the library in the Beaux Arts style they had studied in France.  Beaux-Arts is a neo-classical style with heavy ornamentation, rows of dual columns and stone facades that creates a beautiful but formal and imposing structure.  It was a favorite style of wealthy Americans during the American Renaissance who were eager to show off their great fortunes.


Building the N.Y.P.L was not a quick and dirty project.  It took 16 long years to build the structure which was the largest marble building of it’s time, certainly a labor of love for Dr. Billings who only lived 2 years past it’s grand opening.  The abbreviated timeline looks like this:   

1900- demolish Croton Reservoir to prepare for building

1902 - the cornerstone is laid

1905 - marble columns lifted into place

1906 - roof completed and interior started

1910 - 75 miles of shelves installed

1911 - ta da - the library opens!

Sixteen years after John Bigelow had orchestrated the plan to merge the Astor, Lenox and Tilden resources the spectacular New York Public Library was opened.  President William Howard Taft was at the dedication ceremony that gave the public access to more than a million books.  On the first day it is estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors stopped by to check it out.
The project reminds me of a relay race made up of great (most rich) men starting in 1839 with the thought of providing a library for the people of NY.  As each man bowed out he passed his baton to the next to continue moving forward.  1911 certainly wasn’t the finish line, for NYPL patrons the fun had only started.  1911 was the end of the beginning and the beginning of something truly great.