New York Public Library writes:

In addition to collecting the rare as well as the commonplace, it has, since the very beginning, acquired materials often regarded as controversial or even offensive by some. For instance, during the height of McCarthyism in the late 1940s, it actively acquired materials from the Left and the Right, despite the objections of government and citizens’ patriotic groups.

The ways in which the resources of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building have been used are as diverse as the collections themselves. To cite but a few examples:

• During World War II, Allied military intelligence used the Map Division for research on the coastlines of countries in the theater of combat.
• Television and print journalists first consulted the Slavic and Baltic Division when covering the changing political structure of the former Soviet Union.
• Authors of countless literary and nonfiction books cite the Library as a major resource in their work.
• Newly arrived immigrants as well as descendants of the Founding Fathers have reconstructed family histories and located long-lost relatives through records in the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy.

The origins of this institution date back to the time when New York was emerging as one of the world’s most important cities. By the second half of the 19th century, New York had already surpassed Paris in population and was quickly catching up with London, the world’s most populous city. Fortunately, this burgeoning and somewhat brash metropolis counted among its citizens men who foresaw that if New York was indeed to become one of the world’s great centers of urban culture, it must also have a great library.

The site chosen for the home of the new Public Library was the Croton Reservoir, a popular strolling place that occupied a two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets. Dr. John Shaw Billings, one of the most brilliant librarians of his day, was named director.

Billings knew exactly what he wanted. His design, briefly sketched on a scrap of paper, became the early blueprint for the majestic structure that has become the landmark building, known for the lions without and the learning within. Billings’s plan called for an enormous reading room topping seven floors of stacks and the most rapid delivery system in the world to get the Library’s resources as swiftly as possible into the hands of those who requested them.

More than one million books were set in place for the official dedication of the Library on May 23, 1911 – 16 years to the day since the historic agreement creating the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations had been signed. The ceremony was presided over by President William Howard Taft and was attended by Governor John Alden Dix and Mayor William J. Gaynor.

The following morning, New York’s very public Public Library officially opened its doors. The response was overwhelming. Between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors streamed through the building the first day it was open. One of the very first items called for was N. IA. Grot’s Nravstvennye idealy nashego vremeni (Ethical Ideas of Our Time) a study of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoi. The reader filed his slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book six minutes later!

Almost overnight, The New York Public Library became a vital part of the intellectual fabric of American life. Among its earliest beneficiaries were recently arrived immigrants, for whom the Library provided contact with the literature and history of their new country as well as the heritage that these people brought with them.

Today, the library  on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street is to be renamed for the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who has agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own. The project is set to be complete in 2014.

Interesting Facts:

• In 1926, the Library boasted six former Olympic athletes on its staff (four Americans and two Danes): a hurdler, three high jumpers, one broad jumper, a mountain climber, an oarsman/canoeist, and a discus thrower.
• The winter of 1929-30 was the most active period in the Library’s history. It was not uncommon for there to be 800 to 1,000 people in the Main Reading Room, a “standing room only” capacity. The single busiest day in the Main Reading Room was December 30, 1929, when 8,939 books were requested.
• After Pearl Harbor was attacked, the most valuable volumes and manuscripts at the Library were moved to bank vaults around New York City. 12,000 items from the collection, valued at that time at $10 million, were temporarily moved to a secret location 250 miles away.