But trouble really started in 2008 with the announcement of the Central Library Plan (CLP). This ill-conceived scheme was blessed by the then director Paul LeClerc and supported by the board of trustees: a varied group of philanthropists, bankers, real estate brokers, public intellectuals and academics, among others. The real power of the board, however, rests with the members of its executive committee, the movers and shakers of finance and real estate, who, Sherman says, hatched the CLP.
The plan, devised with the advice of national consulting firms with little experience outside the private sector and with scant public input, was to sell two branch libraries: the heavily-used Mid-Manhattan circulating library (also on Fifth Avenue) and the Science, Industry, and Business Library, built in the 1990s. With the projected proceeds from these sales, plus $150 million in capital funds pledged by the then mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the plan could reshape the NYPL, or so the trustees believed.
The cornerstone of the CLP was the construction of a new circulating library, made necessary by the sale of the popular Mid-Manhattan. This new library was to be housed in the 100,000 square foot space underneath Billings’s reading room. To make space for this, the seven storeys of stacks would be gutted, and three million of the books they shelved shipped to a remote storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey, 60 miles away.
This, the Library explained, was necessary because the stacks lacked proper climate control. It also cited a 60 per cent decrease in use of the collections (obviously the result of the digitisation of books and periodicals now available online) and the fact that only 6 per cent of the specialised books were being used in a year. Scholars and researchers, who must consult important but esoteric material that may not have been requested for decades, found these number-crunching explanations bizarre.
The commission for the circulating library was awarded to Norman Foster. His design — a cavernous, galleried hall, looking like something between a suburban shopping mall and an airport terminal — would have clashed with and dwarfed Carrère and Hastings’s beautifully calibrated, elegant spaces. Lord Foster called it “the greatest project ever”. Not to be outdone, LeClerc boasted that the CLP would create “the biggest comprehensive library in human history”. Hyperbole abounded.
In 2011, LeClerc left the NYPL for Columbia University’s Europe Global Center in Paris, to be succeeded by Tony Marx, the former president of Amherst College. Marx too defended the CLP, inexplicably claiming that it would make the Library (already freely accessible to anyone) more democratic. He called Foster’s proposed design the rather Soviet-sounding “people’s palace”, but many New Yorkers who were already protesting against these radical changes weren’t mollified.
Opposition intensified as critics, some of them spoiling for a fight against the financiers on the NYPL board of trustees, filed lawsuits. A petition was eventually signed by 3,000 people, including many writers, academics and public intellectuals.
The plan, devised with the advice of national consulting firms with little experience outside the private sector and with scant public input, was to sell two branch libraries: the heavily-used Mid-Manhattan circulating library (also on Fifth Avenue) and the Science, Industry, and Business Library, built in the 1990s. With the projected proceeds from these sales, plus $150 million in capital funds pledged by the then mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the plan could reshape the NYPL, or so the trustees believed.
The cornerstone of the CLP was the construction of a new circulating library, made necessary by the sale of the popular Mid-Manhattan. This new library was to be housed in the 100,000 square foot space underneath Billings’s reading room. To make space for this, the seven storeys of stacks would be gutted, and three million of the books they shelved shipped to a remote storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey, 60 miles away.
This, the Library explained, was necessary because the stacks lacked proper climate control. It also cited a 60 per cent decrease in use of the collections (obviously the result of the digitisation of books and periodicals now available online) and the fact that only 6 per cent of the specialised books were being used in a year. Scholars and researchers, who must consult important but esoteric material that may not have been requested for decades, found these number-crunching explanations bizarre.
The commission for the circulating library was awarded to Norman Foster. His design — a cavernous, galleried hall, looking like something between a suburban shopping mall and an airport terminal — would have clashed with and dwarfed Carrère and Hastings’s beautifully calibrated, elegant spaces. Lord Foster called it “the greatest project ever”. Not to be outdone, LeClerc boasted that the CLP would create “the biggest comprehensive library in human history”. Hyperbole abounded.
In 2011, LeClerc left the NYPL for Columbia University’s Europe Global Center in Paris, to be succeeded by Tony Marx, the former president of Amherst College. Marx too defended the CLP, inexplicably claiming that it would make the Library (already freely accessible to anyone) more democratic. He called Foster’s proposed design the rather Soviet-sounding “people’s palace”, but many New Yorkers who were already protesting against these radical changes weren’t mollified.
Opposition intensified as critics, some of them spoiling for a fight against the financiers on the NYPL board of trustees, filed lawsuits. A petition was eventually signed by 3,000 people, including many writers, academics and public intellectuals.
Like this article? Share, save or print using the icons below:
