In 2000, an interior renovation and exterior restoration by Sen Architects was completed. It was built using Carnegie funds and opened in 1905. ![]() The branch was recognized as an excellent example of library planning and design in the March 1903 issue of Library Journal. In 2004 it received a $2.1 million renovation. ![]() The current two-story facility opened in 1960. The branch was first organized in 1880 by the Bay Ridge Reading Club, built on its present site in 1896, and became a branch library in 1901. The branch was originally known as the East Branch and officially opened on Novemit was renovated from 1950–52 and in 1980. The other two are the New York Public Library (serving the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island), and the Queens Library (serving Queens). The Brooklyn Public Library is one of three separate and independent public library systems in New York City. The Brooklyn Public Library also has five adult learning centers. Eighteen libraries are historic Carnegie libraries. Instead, they have a lightness that serves as a perfect counterpoint to the weight and gravitas of the old.The Brooklyn Public Library consists of a Central Library, a Business & Career Library, and 58 neighborhood branches in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Foster’s interventions never mimic the forms of the old. They are sharp and crisp, and they exude an air of cool, self-assured modernity. ![]() Foster’s best buildings have an edge to them. He is probably the leading architect in the world in the category of modernist insertions into historic buildings, and his best works in this sphere-the glass dome atop the Reichstag in Berlin, the glass-roofed courtyard at the British Museum in London, the metal-and-glass Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy of Art in London, and the Hearst Tower in New York-are all bold pieces of contemporary architecture that engage historic buildings in vibrant, potent dialogue. The problem is that Foster, so far, does not seem to have produced the modern equivalent of Carrere and Hastings, as he was expected to do. Once again scholars and the public will share this great building, as, in fact, Carrere and Hastings meant them to, and as they did until 1971. And since the old stacks are not open to the public and the new library will consist almost entirely of public space, an enormous amount of the building that is now off-limits to most of us will be made available to everyone-66 percent of the library’s space, Marx says, compared with 30 percent now.Īll well and good, as is the idea of freeing us all from the dilapidated Mid-Manhattan Library across the street (its contents will constitute the new circulating library). I’m not sure I know how to judge the accuracy of that figure, but I accept the idea. Tony Marx, the library’s president, claims that books will be stored in conditions “five times safer” than they are now. A lot of things have changed in the world since the library was completed in 1911, and while this great building has been able to accommodate most of them without major physical changes, it does not strain credibility to say that providing ideal conditions for the preservation of books does not fall into that category. The first is that the premise on which the project is based, which is that the old book stacks are difficult if not impossible to bring up to current standards of temperature and humidity control and fireproofing, is understandable, and while it’s troubling to consider such drastic alterations to Carrere and Hastings’s original, incomparable design, it does make sense for the sake of the books. I’ve had two reactions to the scheme, now that we’ve seen what Foster actually has in mind. All of the battling was over the concept, however, not the specifics of Foster’s design. ![]() The New York Public Library has finally revealed Norman Foster’s designs for the $300 million renovation of its iconic building on Fifth Avenue, a project I wrote about in the December issue of Vanity Fair*.* The plan, which calls for the removal of the seven-story original book stacks on the west side of the building and the insertion of an entirely new public circulating library in its place, was announced quietly in 2008, put on the shelf during the financial downturn, and brought back to life in 2011, provoking no small amount of controversy over the wisdom of making such a dramatic change to what is unquestionably the city’s most beloved cultural building.
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