The New York Public Library’s Last, Secret Apartments (2016)

When I see beautiful old buildings neglected like this, it's heartbreaking to me. The only reason nobody lives there and makes a storied life of it that enriches the life of the city is because of some quirk of bureaucracy. The converse is when someone does inhabit something like this, it's criticized as a "sweetheart deal" with the implication if not the outright accusation of corruption. In Toronto, we have an island downtown with homes on 100y leases that cannot be re-sold at market rates, but also cannot be willed to heirs, and that has a pretty transparent waiting list system, which still gets periodic criticism as corrupt.

These library apartments could be revitalized to operate on a similar scheme, even though there would be huge risk of them going to the politically connected and patronage. Political classes tend not to understand that it is these exceptions that produce the stories that provide the character that makes cities desirable, and not their rules.

I lived in a historical apartment building for several years, and it has occupied a psychogeographical landmark in the culture of the city for generations, appearing in various novels and with a cast of storied occupants. They were too large and expensive and a bit out of the way for fashionable rentals, so the people there always had a reason to be oddly both transient and yet still maintaining the refinement they were used to. Society divorcees and scandalized people in transition, politicians from remote ridings, elderly widows, downwardly mobile sons of establishment families, mistresses, professional artists and musicians who needed to be in the city but could never raise enough for a down payment - these characters and archetypes form the mythology of cities, and buildings like those library apartments and other historical buildings contribute to it. The promise of hidden beauty and riches and the ability to find it is the essence of the appeal of a city. I hope they find a way to open them up again.

The NYPL board has discussed renovating and re-purposing these apartments. It's a good idea, though it should be pointed out that this board has a history of foolish, reckless, and possibly corrupt dealing, as when they sold off the Donnell Branch and nearly destroyed the iconic Main Library on 42nd & 5th (the one with the lions; look up "Central Library Plan" for details).

This year, SaveNYPL.org got federal and state protection for NYC's remaining 56 Carnegie libraries: https://www.savenypl.org/major-victory-landmarking-nycs-carn...

Now we are working on a local designation. This is important because real estate developers have many of these buildings in the crosshairs. Currently, hand in hand with the NYPL and the Robin Hood Foundation, they are looking to tear down the Inwood Branch, under the guise of building a shiny new library, inside a big condo with some "affordable housing". A few years ago, they did tear down the Brooklyn Heights Branch, replacing it with a smaller library inside a large condo (there is an argument that civic works ought to be freestanding to communicate import). Before that, the Donnell Library was torn down, replaced year later with a library that is a fraction of the original and squeezed into a basement beneath a luxury hotel, the latter valued at a multiple of what the NYPL got in the deal. And for a while, the developers behind the Barclays Center were itching to tear down the Pacific Branch in Brooklyn.

These libraries are important civic spaces. Whatever your feelings about paper vs digital, there is no denying that NYC's libraries are heavily used, and that they constitute an important part of the fabric of our civic life, a place where New Yorkers of all stripes congregate and mingle.

Historical footnote: NYPL is in fact a private institution chartered by New York State, formed through the merger of the Astor and Lenox libraries, to which was added a gift from the Tilden Foundation. It serves the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, while the Queens Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library have their own systems (Brooklyn was a separate city until 1898). To further confuse matters, many of the libraries NYPL runs, including the Main Library, are owned by NYC, while others are belong to NYPL itself. Scott Sherman's book, Patience & Fortitude, provides a good, pithy history.

A small detail glossed over in the article is that New York City has three separate library systems. The New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library were all founded in the mid-19th century years before the creation of New York City and it's five boroughs in 1898.

The New York Public library built 30 Carnegie libraries, the Brooklyn Public Library 21 and the Queens Public Library 7.

I spent the last half of my 20s and the beginning of my 30s living in a carriage house of an old Tudor revival mansion in New England. The building itself was purchased in the 60s and used as a research institute. Loosely affiliated with the large university in town.

I worked at there as a software engineer by day, and took care of the property the rest of the time. There was no shortage of projects. My girlfriend moved in with me eventually. We returned there after our honeymoon, and our son was most likely conceived there. I miss it often.

I still work there, but covid has kept us away. This article reminds me of that time in my life. Thanks for sharing.

I was in new York once. I was amazed by:

1) Subway system, and its fauna.

2) The state of historical, and not so much building, and that people were still living in them.

Reminds me of the apartments built into London’s Palace of Westminster. (They’re for the current speakers of the House of Lords and House of Commons to live in, if they so choose.)

It seems reasonable that modern libraries should be able to provide housing like this, intended for the people who provide lessons in e.g. computer use, bee keeping, and laser cutter operation (to list a few of the options available at my local branches).

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847

This building doesn't even look like it was originally a library. It looks like it was repurposed to be a library.

the bottom of the page has a link to a video of one of the apartments: https://youtu.be/_VfJsTKHBT4 the date says 2018 but the video looks very similar to the images so I suspect it was taken at the same time the main story was.