{"id":268234,"date":"2021-06-07T03:11:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T00:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/new-midtown-library-exactly-what-nyc-needs-after-covid-19\/"},"modified":"2021-06-07T03:11:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T00:11:46","slug":"new-midtown-library-exactly-what-nyc-needs-after-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/new-midtown-library-exactly-what-nyc-needs-after-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"#New Midtown library exactly what NYC needs after COVID-19\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#New Midtown library exactly what NYC needs after COVID-19\u00a0<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Last week, after more than a decade of false starts, the New York Public Library \u00adunveiled its fully renovated Midtown book-lending building on Fifth Avenue. The eight-story library is a Midtown triumph. As New York recovers from the pandemic, Gotham needs more projects like this: less \u201creimagining,\u201d more back-to-basics nuts and bolts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new library is a full-scale refurbishment of the shell of the 106-year-old limestone edifice, once home to the Arnold, Constable & Co. department store. NYPL has operated a library there since 1970, lending out 2 million books, DVDs and other materials every year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But NYPL shuttered the building four years ago for the $200 million gut reworking. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, funded by the late Greek shipping \u00adtycoon, funded a quarter of its cost, so the library has named the new branch after him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first thing you notice in the new library is the natural light. The huge old-store windows mean that on sunny days, at least, it\u2019s easy to browse without much help from artificial lighting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second thing you notice is that the smart design allows for lots of open space and lots of books \u2014 a capacity of 400,000. There is floor after floor, not just of new releases, but older fiction, history, biography and cookbooks you wouldn\u2019t think about unless you ran across them on these shelves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"People
People walk on the rooftop terrace of the NYPL.<\/figcaption>
Mike Segar\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The library boasts ample sit-down workspace (although still roped off, due to the pandemic): huge workbenches with plenty of plugs for computers and banks of computers for people who don\u2019t have one to bring. And: a kids\u2019 section and an outdoor terrace (the latter also not regularly open yet).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what about the architecture? The best thing about the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library is that it is nothing crazily special. Beyer Blinder Belle, a firm that does lots of updates to historic sites like City Hall did what it was supposed to do: build a library.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is exactly what a normal person would consider to be a normal library.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no great, multibillion-dollar \u201crethinking\u201d: no steel birds\u2019 wings that are supposed to open and close, as at the Port Authority\u2019s post-9\/11 Oculus train station downtown (the wings didn\u2019t work). No hundred-story empty supertall tower on top of a \u00admuseum, as at MoMA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A
The 5th Avenue building underwent a $200 million renovation. <\/figcaption>
Mike Segar\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This obvious plan wasn\u2019t the library\u2019s first choice; it took a lot of screwups to get to here. In 2008, the NYPL sold off its Donnell branch on 53rd Street to a developer. This was supposed to be a smart real-estate deal: The developer would preserve some space at the bottom of its hotel tower for a new \u00adlibrary, lessening the burden for the taxpayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, it took eight years \u2014and half a generation of kids missing out on a\u00a0branch \u2014 for the library to get its windowless space in the basement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, there was NYPL\u2019s \u201ccentral-library\u201d plan. Nearly 10 years ago, the library proposed a grand scheme to sell off the Midtown department-store building to some supertall \u00addeveloper and use the proceeds to dig out a huge new circulating library underneath the \u00adresearch headquarters across the street, thus, somehow, saving money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation helped fund about 25 percent of the total cost.<\/figcaption>
Mike Segar\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This would have meant moving research collections to New Jersey, forcing scholars to wait days for books, and the proposed price tag, $300 million, was laughably underestimated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Judging from the fact that it cost $200 million to bring us the Stavros Niarchos, the central-library project likely would have topped $1 billion, consuming money needed to run 92 separate branches across three boroughs (Queens and Brooklyn have their own\u00a0systems).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2014, after two years of near-universal booing, the \u00adlibrary ditched this harebrained idea, and that\u2019s how, seven years later, we have a modern circulating library for Midtown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"New
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at the opening ceremony of the library.<\/figcaption>
Mike Segar\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a lesson for the next mayor: We don\u2019t need to \u201crethink\u201d everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need four new borough-based jails, at a cost of $9 billion (or more) \u2014 we need to spend far less to build modern jail buildings at Rikers Island, and provide better bus service for visitors\u00a0<\/p>\n

We need to pick a plan, fast, to replace the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, likely a slimmed-down road, before the existing one falls down \u2014 and then actually do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A
A view of the children\u2019s section in the interior of the New York Public Library.<\/figcaption>
Mike Segar\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There aren\u2019t that many ways to do the obvious: When people just want to borrow a book, they just want to borrow a book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @NicoleGelinas<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#New Midtown library exactly what NYC needs after COVID-19\u00a0” Last week, after more than a decade of false starts, the New York Public Library \u00adunveiled its fully renovated Midtown book-lending building on Fifth Avenue. The eight-story library is a Midtown triumph. As New York recovers from the pandemic, Gotham needs more projects like this: less…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/06\/NYPL-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[108513,82136,4952,4953,73805],"class_list":["post-268234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-6-6-21","tag-libraries","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-public-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}