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elleng

(130,126 posts)
Wed May 7, 2014, 01:21 PM May 2014

Public Library Abandons Plan to Revamp 42nd Street Building.

Source: nyt

In a striking about-face, the New York Public Library has abandoned its plan to turn part of its research flagship on 42nd Street into a circulating library and instead will renovate the Mid-Manhattan library on Fifth Avenue, several library trustees said.

“When the facts change, the only right thing to do as a public-serving institution is to take a look with fresh eyes and see if there is a way to improve the plans and to stay on budget,” Tony Marx, the library’s president, said Wednesday in an interview.

The renovation, formerly known as the Central Library Plan, would have required eliminating the book stacks under the building’s main reading room and was to have been paid for with $150 million from New York City and the proceeds from the sale of the Mid-Manhattan, at 40th Street, and the Science, Industry and Business Library in the former B. Altman building, on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.

The change in course comes as Mayor Bill de Blasio prepares to announce his final budget on Thursday. The library is still expected to receive the $150 million that had been allotted to the project under the Bloomberg administration, but it will now be used for other purposes, several library trustees said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/arts/design/public-library-abandons-plan-to-revamp-42nd-street-building.html?_r=0

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Public Library Abandons Plan to Revamp 42nd Street Building. (Original Post) elleng May 2014 OP
Sounds like good news to me! DLnyc May 2014 #1
+1 n/t RoccoR5955 May 2014 #2
Good! LadyHawkAZ May 2014 #3
New York Public Library abandons controversial renovation plans. dipsydoodle May 2014 #4

DLnyc

(2,479 posts)
1. Sounds like good news to me!
Wed May 7, 2014, 01:56 PM
May 2014

The New York Public Library at 42nd Street is one of the few remaining truly wonderful public spaces in New York City. The "renovation" plan always sounded more like a plan for destruction to me. For reference, look up the history of Pennsylvania station in New York City, which was an architectural jewel "renovated" into a nightmare.

dipsydoodle

(42,239 posts)
4. New York Public Library abandons controversial renovation plans.
Wed May 7, 2014, 05:56 PM
May 2014

The New York Public Library has abandoned controversial plans to renovate its Fifth Avenue central research branch, a 100-year-old beaux-arts landmark that was set to be converted into a lending library. The NYPL will instead renovate its Mid-Manhattan branch, a large but fairly rundown lending branch across from the research institution.

The move is a substantial and unexpected U-turn for the country’s second-largest library system, which for two years faced concerted protests from employees, library patrons, and architectural preservationists but insisted that its proposals were the only way forward. The Central Library Plan, as it was called, would have blasted open the stacks underneath the research branch’s upper reading room and exiled 1.5m books to a warehouse in New Jersey. Tony Marx, the library’s chief executive officer, had described the plan as one that would “replace books with people.” But many of the city’s researchers and writers, including Junot Diaz, Lydia Davis and Art Spiegelman, demonstrated against the plans – which they called everything from plutocratic to barbarous.

Four different lawsuits had been filed against the project, accusing the library both of endangering its purpose as a research institution and of damaging the architectural integrity of the central branch. In the landmark building, which opened in 1911 and was designed by the eminent architectural firm Carrère and Hastings, the reading room sits unusually at the top of the building, above massive stacks of books that are ferried to readers via a system of centralized elevators. The Central Library Plan would have broken open the stacks to create a lending library, designed by the British firm Foster & Partners, that would have featured sofas and computer banks but would have exiled most of the books to an underground storage facility or an offsite warehouse. (While the library published several schematic renderings, Foster’s full designs have never been revealed to the public.)

The shift is also a victory – if perhaps an accidental one – for Bill de Blasio, the city’s new mayor, who campaigned against the renovations during last year’s municipal election. In his previous role as New York’s public advocate, de Blasio joined demonstrators on the steps of the NYPL to oppose the Central Library Plan. But he had not spoken out on the library plans since taking office on 1 January.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/07/new-york-public-library-abandons-renovation-plan

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