LIBRARY NOTES
Barbara H. Stanton
The Wallet
Saturday, June 1, 1996
This next year, like the last several ones, will be a time of intense behind-the-scenes activity as the staff prepares for the automated circulation made possible by the successful completion of the recent three-year Capital campaign. Contrary to some appearances, such activity is not new to the Library. Sixty years ago was a time of even greater change. In the spring of 1936, the trustees purchased the present building, which officially opened to the public fifteen months later, on July 1, 1937. In the intervening time, the building was remodeled to make it suitable for library use, and the collection was moved from 109 University Place.
The new building was the former residence of Mrs. John Shillito Rogers and built in 1917 to designs by Trowbridge and Livingston -- already architects of B. Altman and Company (1906, extended 1914). It is intriguing to think that these two structures -- build for very different purposes -- would come to house libraries: ours, and, in the former Altman's this year, the Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) of the New York Public Library. The 1936 purchase price for our building was $175,000, and the Board then contracted for about $108,000 of alterations, principally for putting in stacks -- in the midst of the Depression, no mean sums.
These outlays were made possible through the February, 1917 bequest of Sarah C. Goodhue of 189 Madison Avenue (her house must have stood just across Madison Avenue from the then new Altman's). In her will, Mrs. Goodhue made the Library her residuary legatee, "desiring that a portion of this gift, not exceeding, however, the sum of $600,000, shall be expended...for the purchase of real property in the said Borough of Manhattan, and the erection thereon of a building designed and equipped for a new library building..."
The move of 60 years ago involved vacuum cleaning, boxing, and moving every book -- which puts our current modernization into proportion. However, as before, the burden of change has fallen particularly heavy on the staff. All hail to Heidi Hass, head of the Cataloging Department, and her colleagues, who received a much-deserved award at the Annual Meeting for inventorying and bar-coding the collection preparatory to retrospective conversion! And also hail to Mrs. Goodhue and to others -- including many present readers -- whose foresighted gifts have allowed this Library to thrive.
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