during its late stage construction in 1908 with the lion statues not yet installed at the entrance copy of the
Gutenberg Bible in the New York Public Library At the behest of
Joseph Cogswell,
John Jacob Astor placed a
codicil in his will to bequeath $400,000 (equivalent of $ million in ) for the creation of a public library. After Astor's death in 1848, the resulting board of trustees executed the will's conditions and constructed the
Astor Library in 1854 in the
East Village. The library created was a free reference library; its books were not permitted to circulate. By 1872, the Astor Library was described in a
New York Times editorial as a "major reference and research resource", An act of the
New York State Legislature incorporated the
Lenox Library in 1870. The library was built on
Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st Streets, in 1877.
Bibliophile and philanthropist
James Lenox donated a vast collection of his
Americana, art works, manuscripts, and rare books, including the first
Gutenberg Bible in the
New World. Former
Governor of New York and presidential candidate
Samuel J. Tilden believed that a library with citywide reach was required, and upon his death in 1886, he
bequeathed the bulk of his fortune—about (equivalent of $ million in )—to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York". This money would sit untouched in a
trust for several years, until
John Bigelow, a New York attorney, and
Andrew Haswell Green, both trustees of the Tilden fortune, came up with an idea to merge two of the city's largest libraries. Bigelow, the most prominent supporter of the plan to merge the two libraries found support in
Lewis Cass Ledyard, a member of the Tilden Board, as well as
John Cadwalader, on the Astor board. Eventually,
John Stewart Kennedy, president of the Lenox board, also came to support the plan. On May 23, 1895, Bigelow, Cadwalader, and
George L. Rives agreed to create "The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations". The plan was hailed as an example of private philanthropy for the public good. In March,
Andrew Carnegie tentatively agreed to donate (equivalent of $ million in ) to construct sixty-five
branch libraries in the city, with the requirement that they be operated and maintained by the City of New York. The Brooklyn and Queens public library systems, which predated the
consolidation of New York City, eschewed the grants offered to them and did not join the NYPL system; they believed that they would not get treatment equal to the
Manhattan and
the Bronx counterparts. Later, in 1901, Carnegie formally signed a contract with the City of New York to transfer his donation to the city in order to enable it to justify purchasing the land for building the branch libraries. The NYPL Board of trustees hired consultants for the planning, and accepted their recommendation that a limited number of architectural firms be hired to build the Carnegie libraries; this would ensure uniformity of appearance and minimize cost. The trustees hired
McKim, Mead & White,
Carrère and Hastings, and
Walter Cook to design all the branch libraries. New York author
Washington Irving was a close friend of Astor for decades and had helped the philanthropist design the Astor Library. Irving served as President of the library's Board of Trustees from 1848 until his death in 1859, shaping the library's collecting policies with his strong sensibility regarding European intellectual life. Subsequently, the library hired nationally prominent experts to guide its collections policies; they reported directly to directors
John Shaw Billings (who also developed the
National Library of Medicine),
Edwin H. Anderson,
Harry M. Lydenberg,
Franklin F. Hopper, Ralph A. Beals, and Edward Freehafer (1954–1970). They emphasized expertise, objectivity, and a very broad worldwide range of knowledge in acquiring, preserving, organizing, and making available to the general population nearly 12 million books and 26.5 million additional items. The directors in turn reported to an elite board of trustees, chiefly elderly, well-educated, philanthropic, predominantly Protestant, upper-class white men with commanding positions in American society. They saw their role as protecting the library's autonomy from politicians as well as bestowing upon it status, resources, and prudent care. Representative of many major board decisions was the purchase in 1931 of the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909), uncle of the last
tsar. This was one of the largest acquisitions of Russian books and photographic materials; at the time, the Soviet government had a policy of selling its cultural collections abroad for gold. Related collections include a significant number of important works by Russian photographers, and photographs related to the
House of Romanov and Russia expert
George Kennan. The military drew extensively from the library's map and book collections in the world wars, including hiring its staff. For example, the Map Division's chief Walter Ristow was appointed as head of the geography section of the War Department's New York Office of Military Intelligence from 1942 to 1945. Ristow and his staff discovered, copied, and loaned thousands of strategic, rare or unique maps to war agencies in need of information not available through other sources.
Research libraries Main branch building The organizers of the New York Public Library, wanting an imposing main branch, chose a central site along
Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, on top of the
Croton Reservoir.
John Shaw Billings, the first director of the library, created an initial design that became the basis of the new building containing a huge reading room on top of seven floors of book stacks, combined with a system that was designed to get books into the hands of library users as fast as possible. It was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. in 1909, best known for designing the
Lincoln cent. Though rarely used, the seated
personification of wisdom appears on plaques at several branches. The
two stone lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by
E.C. Potter and carved by the
Piccirilli Brothers. Its main reading room was contemporaneously the largest of its kind in the world at wide by long, with ceilings. An expansion in the 1970s and 1980s added storage space under
Bryant Park, directly west of the library. The structure was given a major restoration from 2007 to 2011, underwritten by a $100 million gift from philanthropist
Stephen A. Schwarzman, for whom the branch was subsequently renamed. Today, the branch's main reading room is equipped with computers with access to library collections and the Internet as well as docking facilities for laptops. A Fellows program makes reserved rooms available for writers and scholars, selected annually, and many have accomplished important research and writing at the library. and designated a
New York City designated landmark in 1967. Astor Hall, first-to-third-floor stairs, and McGraw Rotunda were designated as interior landmarks in 1974. and the Rose Main Reading Room and Public Catalog Room were separately made New York City designated landmarks in 2017.
Other research branches In the 1990s, the New York Public Library decided to relocate that portion of the research collection devoted to science, technology, and business to a new location. The library purchased and adapted the former
B. Altman & Company Building on
34th Street. In 1995, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the library, the
Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), designed by
Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of Manhattan, opened to the public. Upon the creation of the SIBL, the central research library on 42nd Street was renamed the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Today there are four research libraries that comprise the NYPL's research library system; together they hold approximately 44 million items. Total item holdings, including the collections of the Branch Libraries, are . The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system. The SIBL, with approximately volumes and 60,000 periodicals, is the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the
Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in
Harlem, and the
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at
Lincoln Center. In addition to their reference collections, the Library for the Performing Arts and the SIBL also have circulating components that are administered as ordinary branch libraries.
Recent history found in the front pastedown of
Drexel 4180, a manuscript in the Music Division of the New York Public Library The New York Public Library was not created by government statute. From its earliest days, the library was formed from a partnership of city government with private philanthropy. In 2010, as part of the consolidation program, the NYPL moved various back-office operations to a new
Library Services Center building in Long Island City. A former warehouse was renovated for this purpose for . In the basement, a new, book sorter uses bar codes on library items to sort them for delivery to 132 branch libraries. At two-thirds the length of a football field, the machine is the largest of its kind in the world, according to library officials. Books located in one branch and requested from another go through the sorter, the use of which has cut waiting times by at least a day. Together with 14 library employees, the machine can sort 7,500 items an hour (or 125 a minute). On the first floor of the Library Services Center is an ordering and cataloging office; on the second, the digital imaging department (formerly at the Main Branch building) and the manuscripts and archives division, where the air is kept cooler; on the third, the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division, with a staff of 10 (as of 2010) but designed for as many as 30 employees. By 2016 the project had produced an app called "SimplyE", which the library launched that year; patrons could explore and check-out ebooks from multiple vendors, with just a few clicks. The library released the code for SimplyE
open source. To celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2020, the NYPL calculated a list of its most checked out books. Topping the list was
Ezra Jack Keats'
The Snowy Day, with
The Cat in the Hat and
Nineteen Eighty-Four rounding out the top three. Until 2021, the NYPL charged a late fee of $0.25 per day per book; other types of items had different late fees, and seniors and disabled patrons paid lower late fees. The library system's president,
Anthony Marx, indicated his intention to eliminate late fees after assuming the library's presidency in 2011. The NYPL stopped charging late fees on October 5, 2021. Existing debts have since been cleared from the records of all NYPL patrons. On November 26, 2023, Sunday services were discontinued at select branches where it was offered; along with reduced programs for adults and children. This followed months of contentious budget negotiations between the
City Council and Mayor
Eric Adams, with Adams claiming that the
New York City migrant housing crisis necessitated the budget cuts. The $12.6 million in city spending for the NYPL represents 0.02% of the city's 2024 budget of $110 billion. Funding for Sunday service was restored in June 2024.
BookOps In February 2013, the New York and
Brooklyn public libraries announced that they would merge their technical services departments. The new department is called BookOps. The proposed merger anticipates a savings of $2 million for the Brooklyn Public Library and $1.5 million for the New York Public Library. Although not currently part of the merger, it is expected that the
Queens Public Library will eventually share some resources with the other city libraries. As of 2011, circulation in the New York Public Library systems and
Brooklyn Public Library systems has increased by 59%. Located in
Long Island City, BookOps was created as a way to save money while improving patrons service. The services of BookOps include the Selection Team which "acquires, describes, prepares, and delivers new items for the circulating collections of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and New York Public Library, and for the general collections of NYPL's research libraries." Under the Selection Team are the Acquisitions Department, the Cataloging Department, The Collections Processing Unit, and the Logistics Department. Before this facility opened, all the aforementioned departments were housed in different locations with no accountability between them, and items sometimes taking up to two weeks to reach their intended destination. BookOps now has all departments in one building and in 2015 sorted almost eight million items. The building has numerous rooms, including a room dedicated to caring for damaged books.
Controversies The consolidations and changes in collections have promoted continuing debate and controversy since 2004 when
David Ferriero was named the Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries. NYPL had engaged consultants
Booz Allen Hamilton to survey the institution, and Ferriero endorsed the survey's report as a big step "in the process of reinventing the library". The consolidation program has resulted in the elimination of subjects such as the Asian and Middle East Division (formerly named Oriental Division), as well as the Slavic and Baltic Division. A number of innovations in recent years have been criticized. In 2004 NYPL announced participation in the
Google Books Library Project. By agreement between Google and major international libraries, selected collections of public domain books would be scanned in their entirety and made available online for free to the public. The negotiations between the two partners called for each to project guesses about ways that libraries are likely to expand in the future. According to the terms of the agreement, the data cannot be crawled or harvested by any other search engine; no downloading or redistribution is allowed. The partners and a wider community of research libraries can share the content. The sale of the separately endowed former
Donnell Library in midtown provoked controversy. The elimination of Donnell was a result of the dissolution of children's, young adult and foreign language collections. The Donnell Media Center was also dismantled, the bulk of its collection relocated at the
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as the Reserve Film and Video Collection, with parts of its collection redistributed. The site was redeveloped for a luxury hotel. Several veteran librarians have retired, and the number of age-level specialists in the boroughs have been cut back. == Branch libraries ==