Jefferson Market Library

The Jefferson Market Public Library is located at 425 Avenue of the Americas (at 10th St.) in Greenwich Village. It is part of the New York Public Library. The Victorian Gothic style building was designed by Frederick Clark Withers and Calvert Vaux (who also assisted in the design of Central Park) and was built during 1875-1877.

Library Walk

Along Library Way on East 41st Street between Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue, the sidewalk is called Library Walk, a celebration of the world's great literature. In 1996, the New York Public Library, the Grand Central Partnership and the New Yorker Magazine convened a panel of esteemed lovers of the written word and came up with a collection of literary quotations. These quotes were cast in bronze by New York sculptor Gregg LeFevre and then laid out as sidewalk plaques on E41st Street in 1998. Featured above are some of the sidewalk plaques on the north side of the street. The facade of the New York Public Library is in the background in the first and fourth photos.

Keep Calm and Read On

This is the New York Public Library's Gift Shop on Fifth Avenue. The store carries books and objects that represent the library's collections and its building's architecture. Other items being sold are fine jewelry, maps, calendars, books about New York, children's books and related toys, logo-embedded tacks, magnets, bookmarks, pins, and pens. 

Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library

This is the Rose Main Reading Room, a stunning public space that is part of the General Research Division's Room 315 in the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. 

From the New York Public Library website: The space measures seventy-eight feet by two hundred and ninety-seven feet—roughly the length of two city blocks—and weaving together Old World architectural elegance with modern technology. Here, visitors can read or study at long oak tables lit by elegant bronze lamps, beneath fifty-two foot tall ceilings decorated by dramatic murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds. Since the General Research Division’s opening day in 1911, vast numbers of people have entered the main reading room. Literary figures such as Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, E. L. Doctorow and Alfred Kazin have cited the Division as a major resource for their work. In one of his memoirs, New York Jew, Kazin described his youthful impression of the reading room: “There was something about the. . .light falling through the great tall windows, the sun burning smooth the tops of the golden tables as if they had been freshly painted--that made me restless with the need to grab up every book, press into every single mind right there on the open shelves.” A variety of services is available in the Rose Reading Room. Books requested in the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room are delivered here. Patrons can request books from the Library’s stacks, Annex, or off-site storage facility and, in most instances, arrange for copies of their material in the photocopy area. Readers can consult the open-shelf reference collection, which includes standard works in all fields collected by the Division, as well as general resources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographies, and indexes; since this collection alone encompasses over twenty-five thousand volumes, it is more comprehensive than the holdings of many smaller libraries and can be used either as a starting point for research or an easy-access resource in its own right. Patrons with their own laptops can connect for free to the Internet through the Library's Wi-Fi connection or laptop docking service. Computers providing access to the Internet are also available in the South Hall of the Rose Main Reading Room. Patrons can also use public computers that provide access to electronic databases, full-text electronic journals, and literary texts that the Library subscribes to made possible by the integration of new technology in a room almost a century old.

Empire State Building Lights Up in RED in Honor of World AIDS Day

The Empire State Building tower lights up tonight in red to honor World AIDS Day. Every year, the world comes together to stand with people affected by HIV/AIDS, to remember those we have lost and to renew our commitment to ending the pandemic. The photo above was taken from the New York Public Library.

Nathan Sawaya's LEGO Brick Art: Lions For The New York Public Library

Using more than 60, 000 standard gray LEGO bricks, brick artist Nathan Sawaya created replicas of lions, Patience and Fortitude. The lions are displayed inside the New York Public Library door. These sculptures were commissioned by the New York Public Library in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building.

The New York Public Library

Main Reading Room

Entrance to the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room from McGraw Rotunda

Artwork at McGraw Rotunda

Artwork at McGraw Rotunda

Artwork at McGraw Rotunda

Artwork at McGraw Rotunda

Artwork on the Ceiling at McGraw Rotunda

Fifth Avenue Entrance, Astor Hall

Astor Hall

Astor Hall

Astor Hall

View of the Empire State Building through a window of the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room

Located on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, the New York Public Library (Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) is the only facility of its kind, with both world-class research and circulating collections that are free and open to the general public. Now in its second century, the library offers services at 4 major research centers and a network of neighborhood libraries throughout Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. Above are some of the images that I made of the magnificent interior and artwork when I visited the library for the first time.

Public Art: TONY ROSENTHAL'S "Rondo"

This is my night time capture of Tony Rosenthal's "Rondo", sculpture made in 1969, welded bronze, 11 x 11 x 3 feet. This piece was originally displayed at 110 East 59th Street and later moved to 127 East 58th Street in front of the New York Public Library.

From Rosenthal's official website:
Tony Rosenthal, the International Artist, renowned for his Abstract Public Art Sculptures, now 94, continues to create Sculptures that match the vitality of Works the Artist has created over the last five decades. Tony Rosenthal has recently completed a series of masterful Abstract Wood and Metal Wall Sculptures. In Rosenthal’s Wall Sculptures, the Artist has created a metaphor of "writing on the wall"; flat, hard-edged shapes, contrasting suggestions of the organic, all parts of design, shape and organization; the marriage of the hard edge and soothing curves. For example, in "Untitled" ("Two Blue Stripes"), 2007, the yellow shape resembles the profile of a woman's body, while the curved black shape looks like her rear silhouette. Rosenthal presents contrasting shapes within the confines of a geometric circle.

Rosenthal began his career creating Figurative Sculpture, and won wide acclaim. For the last five decades, Tony Rosenthal has created Abstract Sculpture that explores the Geometric Form, i.e., Cube, Circle, Square. Tony Rosenthal’s Cube Sculptures are like a city, intelligent formation with secrets, hiding, balancing and finding in limitations all the possibilities of a mixed society. Within a Cube, we see other shapes, planes, exposed creating steps or stairs, like a mountain difficult to climb. But climb we do, because it is the invention of clean geometry that makes man other than nature. It is our will.

Rosenthal’s Rings, Discs and Rondos, is another important series of Works that Rosenthal has explored over the past five decades. Rosenthal's Circle Sculptures react to the invasion of their environment, so that the Sculpture itself becomes a frame, with which to see the environment through. Being framed by the romance of a point of view, the feeling of movement, the reverberation of movement, we see the vigor from the choices that are commanded by Rosenthal’s Sculpture. Tony Rosenthal finds, discovers and reports to us what we might not have seen without him.

Best known for his large Public Art Sculptures, Tony Rosenthal creates Sculptures in a variety of mediums, including Wood, Aluminum, Cor-Ten Steel; sizes, from Maquettes of a few inches to Monumental Outdoor Sculpture of several hundred feet. Instantly recognizable and seen by millions every year, Rosenthal's Sculptures are better known by their shape and landmark appearance. Edward Albee, the Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright, said it best in his introduction to Sam Hunter's Book "Tony Rosenthal," Rizzoli, 1999, "Tony Rosenthal goes to his studio every day, wrenches steel, bends aluminum, cuts and bolts, fashions and refines. He is both artisan and artist, rendering conscious that which his creative instinct insists upon."

TRANZFORMERZ

The TRANZFORMERZ, a popular group of street performers from the BRONX in the middle of their performance in front of the NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY last September 23rd.