LIBRARY NOTES
William J. Dean
To Library Members
Monday, January 1, 1996
In 1936, the Library purchased from Mrs. John Shillito Rogers its fifth home, a five-story house at 53 East 79th Street, built in 1917 from designs of Trowbridge and Livingston, architects also of the St. Regis Hotel. The $175,000 purchase was made possible by a very generous earlier bequest by Sarah C. Goodhue. The back half of the house was torn out and replaced with twelve tiers of book stacks.
Today, when you enter the Catalogue and Reference Room, you are entering the former reception room of the Rogers' house. The small closet just off the Reference Room was once a wash room. Guests would freshen up here before ascending the grand staircase, or entering the dining room across the hall, now the staff work room behind the carved-oak loan desk.
The Members' Room on the second floor served as the Rogers' library. Stack 6 (fiction section K-Z) is the site of the former drawing rooom. On the third floor, the Whitridge Room was the master bedroom and Librarian Mark Piel's office, the boudoir. Children's bedroooms were on the fourth floor. According to architectural drawings, the large study room on the fifth floor was divided into four maids' rooms, the microfilm room served as the sewing room, and the copier room as a bathroom (note hte remaining wall tiles).
I enjoy being reminded of the building's past. In Stack 6 the other day, looking for
Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, I thought I heard charming drawing room conversation. Or was it my imagination?
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