52 newyork| february17–march1, 2020
the one-page guide to:The New York Public LibraryThe 42nd Street main branch isn’t simply for tourists taking lion selfies or researchers hunching over obscure first editions.
In fact, catching a peek of the “stacks train” and poking through a collection of 200-year-old menus is one
of the best ways any New Yorker can spenda freezing Saturday afternoon. Here’s how to navigate it all, according to
author Ada Calhoun, librarianRebeccaFederman, and photography curator Julia Van Haaften.➽Geta library card.The42ndStreetbranchis a researchlibrary,whichmeansyoucan’t take booksout(theexcep-
tion is the children’s section). But you’ll need a card to look at the rare editions, photographs, and ephemera in the
building (which can be reserved in advance by emailing the library, or you can ask in person; if a book you’d like is in
the stacks, it’ll take about 45 minutes to come up). Apply online, then go pick up the card in the Bill Blass Public Catalog
Room on the third floor. ➽Make a right in the Rose Main Reading Room. The most famous spot in the library,
designed by Carrère and Hastings, runs the length of two city blocks and has 52-foot-high gilded ceilings covered in
murals by James Wall Finn. (The ceilings also have 900 plaster rosettes—one of which fell in 2014, prompting a $12 mil-
lion restoration.) Tour groups are shepherded to the left, leaving the right side of the room available for people to work
quietly. Per Ada Calhoun, “It feels very luxurious to charge your phone at one of the heavy wood desks.” ➽Find a less
obvious lion. There are the two that sit out front, of course (Patience and Fortitude), but the library is filled with them.
“I like the lion water fountains next to the Cullman Center on the second floor best,” says Calhoun. “They have these
surprised-looking eyes.” Rebecca Federman recommends the ones in the children’s center: “The room has the original
Winnie-the-Pooh doll from the 1920s, but I love the giant lions made out of Legos.” ➽Walk down to the South
Court. It’s a six-story glass-enclosed structural addition on the south side of the building. “The stairs wind around in
a circle down to the basement. It’s exciting to get deeper and deeper in the building,” says Julia Van Haaften. ➽Then
walk back up to the Wachenheim Gallery. “In the ’70s, if you had a book contract and wished to smoke, that is
where you’d go,” says Van Haaften. It’s also a jewel box of a space—the marble walls and pilasters have the most lovely
ornamentation.” ➽Go down a photographic rabbit hole. The Picture Collection on the first floor comprises about
1.5 million clippings, all kept on browsable shelves in Room 100. “I went down once looking for images from TV sitcoms
and found a whole folder filled with pictures from The Facts of Life,” says Federman. Van Haaften is partial to the
72,000-piece trove of stereoscopic views of everything from rocks in the Cañon de Chelle to a steamer loading cotton
in Mobile, Alabama, in the Photography Collection on the third floor. ➽Admire some Richard Haas murals. There
are 13 of them in the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room on the first floor. Each depicts a building associated with peri-
odicals publishing in New York, like the Reader’s Digest Building in Pleasantville. ➽The stacks are closed to the
public, but you can watch books come up on the conveyor belt. In 2016, a train system was installed to carry
books up from the stacks. It consists of 24 electric “cars” that travel along a 950-foot track. “Most of the belt is behind
the scenes, but you can see a bit of it if you go to the windows along the south side of the Rose Main Reading Room,”
says Federman. ➽People-watch on the second floor. The study areas (the Astor Room, the Shoichi Noma Reading
Room, the Allen Room, and the Wertheim Study) are reserved for researchers or for writers with book contracts but
are accessible to members of the general public as long as you fill out an application beforehand on the library’s website.
“I haven’t seen Robert Caro there, but a lot of people I know have,” says Calhoun. “And the Wertheim Study feels like a
New Yorker cartoon—lots of academics working on dissertations. It’s the only place in the library I’ve ever been shushed.”
➽Make an appointment to see the Berg Collection. Email [email protected] to set it up. The room is on the third
floor (Room 320) and contains 500 of Charles Dickens’s letters as well as his desk and lamp. It also has, Calhoun says,
“one of the hottest card catalogues around. Like, if you have a fetish for card catalogues, that’s a good one.” ➽Go down
the hall to the Rare Book Division, in Room 328. You just have to register with a librarian when you arrive. Van
Haaften recommends tracking down the Buttolph Collection of Menus, which consists of more than 45,000, some
nearly 200 years old—like an 1854 dinner menu from the Astor House. ➽Use the third-floor bathroom. Calhoun
says, “The first-floor one always has diaper changes going on because it’s right by the children’s room. The second-floor
one is kind of crowded, small. But the third-floor one is very roomy and nice.”
PHOTOGRAPH: BRT PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO