New York Public Library

Today the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously agreed to put the New York Public Library’s biggest private donor in history, Steven Schwarzman, on a pedestal--or, more accurately, allow his name to be inscribed on the two most prominent stone pedestals flanking the main entrance on Fifth Avenue and three other B-list locations.

What, you were expecting some giant crab claw statues instead?

We think they made the right move. Who knows what the repercussions would have been for the NYPL had the Blackstone CEO not received top-billing for the $100 million donation he made on March 11?

Donors have withdrawn less substantial pledges for similar affronts in the past.  read more »

Since your sullen, media-addicted teenager clearly isn't going to go to the library to read (God forbid!), the Humanities and Social Sciences division of the New York Public Library is hoping Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 stations might entice them.

More than 20 NYPL branches in the five boroughs are participating in the "Game On @ The Library!" program this afternoon--it starts at 4:30 at the flagship on 42nd and Fifth.  read more »

The Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously voted to hold hearings on a pair of New York Public Library branches in Harlem, putting them on track toward landmark designation. The move is presumably aimed at placating critics who have faulted the LPC for neglecting Harlem ahead of the anticipated rezoning of 125th Street.  read more »

The New York Public Library will rename its Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street branch after Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who will donate $100 million of his own money to aid the $1 billion expansion of the library system. The New York Times reports that the project aims to transform the Central Library into a destination for book borrowing as well as research. The Mid-Manhattan branch, on the east side of Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, will be sold and its circulating collection absorbed into the new space. The gift from Mr. Schwarzman, a library trustee and buyout guru who made fortune as the chief executive of the Blackstone Group, is among the largest to any cultural institution in the city’s history.  read more »

Librarians seem like the bookish types who hang out by stacks and make friends with moldy books. But David Smith, 54, a supervising librarian in the Allen Room and the Wertheim Study at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, is apparently hobnobbing with the stars. He is their "Virgil of the New York Public Library,” Alexander Rose, author of Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring, told The New York Times, “guiding innocents and counseling the wise alike as he leads them gently away from error and toward intellectual enlightenment.”  read more »

Say cheese for your mugshot, Mr. Cheney! Controversy has erupted from the sleepy third-floor hallway galleries at the New York Public Library, where an exhibition of mug shot-style prints are on display. Each black and white photograph features a member of the Bush administration appearing in profile and face forward, holing a police identification sign and the date on which he or she made a statement of questionable veracity relating to Iraq.

The New York Times reports:  read more »

The New York Public Library will announce its acquisition of 280 linear feet of Arthur Schlesinger's documents today, according to The New York Times. There are 400 boxes of the historian's correspondence and documents, covering everything from his travel diaries of the 1930's to his phone-message log from the 1980's.

In his long career Mr. Schlesinger was, among other things, a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential campaign, a special assistant to the president from 1961 to 1964 and a trustee of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial. He was also active in Edward M. Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign. He won two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards and taught history at the City University of New York.

Mr. Schlesinger wanted the library to be his papers’ final resting place; negotiations for the acquisition were almost complete when he died of a heart attack in February at 89.

The New York Public Library is opening Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road exhibition tomorrow at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's landmark novel, On the Road, and will display the first 60 feet of Kerouac's famous "scroll" typescript.

Reuters reports:

[The exhibit] reveals some less flattering sides of the writer: mama's boy, anti-Semite and perhaps misogynist.

"It will shatter a lot of preconceptions," curator Isaac Gewirtz said of "Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac On the Road," which runs through March 16, accompanied by a lecture series and film screenings.

Lost City, a blog chronicling the carnage wrought by New York's "ruthless real estate market," has nothing but praise for the planned redevelopment of midtown's Donnell library.  read more »