LIBRARY NOTES
The John S. & Catherine Rogers House
Friday, January 1, 1999
The John S. and Catherine Rogers house at 53 East 79th Street was designed in 1916 by the architectural firm of Trowbridge & Livingston and purchased and remodeled in 1936-1937 as the fifth home of The New York Society Library. The following description of what is now the Member's Room was founded by Christopher Gray, trustee and director of the Office for Metropolitan History. It is an excerpt from an article by Augusta Owen Patterson in American Homes of To-Day, 1924.
The town house of Mr. and Mrs. John S. Rogers at 53 East 79th Street has another very fine library. This, as has been observed, is in the period of the Regency. It is very large, very graceful, very comfortable, with a grate fire to give that fitful light on the color of the books on a winter afternoon. The house has, according to the architects' own statement, been built around the furniture and tapestries, which are confined mainly to the drawing room which is not illustrated.
The library is on the second floor, facing on Seventy-ninth Street. The walls here are in walnut. A special feature is the rounded corner. The books are flush with the wall, the openings of them utilized for the introduction of delicate curves and light decoration. The dark wood of the walls is connected quite beautifully with the light cream of the ceiling by a cove, colored a deep ivory, with delicate beadings and corner ornamentation. The room is filled comfortably with furniture, all good, all suitable. Several of the chairs are of the Louis XV type in walnut, with needle point and tapestry seats and backs, the wood here and there revealing a glint of gold. The hangings are old blue and gold damask. The rugs are richly oriental, deepening in color and tone as they near the stone fireplace.
Admirable as the details of the furnishings are, it is, however, the room itself which represents the real achievement. It is at once domestic, spacious, elegant, entirely right. It is a room well worth doing.
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