About Us

The Best Seat in the House: A Brief History of the Green Art Alcove

Christopher Gray | From the Library Notes Newsletter, Friday, June 1, 2007

Architectural historian Christopher Gray is the author of New York Streetscapes : Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buildings and Landmarks (Harry N. Abrams, 2003) and the weekly "Streetscapes" column for the New York Times. He served on the Library's Board from 1998 to 2004 and developed an intimate knowledge of our building and its history.

According to the 2000 membership survey, less than a third of our members have even heard of it, so surely no more than a few hundred compete for the best seat in the house: the Green Art Alcove. But that's enough to place its single chair in maddeningly constant use. The cognoscenti amble down the aisle toward the strange little quarter-staircase, gently peer around the corner, and nearly always find their hopes dashed—someone else has gotten there first. The competition is a testimony to the enduring charm of the odd little room hidden among the art and architecture books on Stack 12.

This delicious assembly of furniture, paneling, bronze, and portraiture was created as a memorial to John Cleve Green, millionaire China trader and railroad entrepreneur. Green died in 1875 at his Staten Island country house, aged 77 or 78. In 1833 he had gone to Canton and soon amassed a large fortune. His New York Tribune obituary said he was also known for his "sterling integrity." Green's city residence was at 10 Washington Square North, as he had been president of New York University, but the Tribune also noted that his gift to Princeton College was "magnificent"—$1 million of his $7 million fortune.

Green neglected to mention the Society Library in his estate, but then-trustee Robert Lenox Kennedy—banker and donor of the Library's precious Hammond Collection—arranged with Green's widow Sarah for a gift of $50,000, with certain restrictions. The money would "always constitute a separate fund"; half would be used for art and architecture books, the other half for general literature; the Library would establish a separate alcove for the collection; only the Board could allow the books to circulate, although Mrs. Green was to have unlimited access. The Greens funded the books, but Kennedy gave the alcove itself, in the form of $10,000 for remodeling and furnishing.

At that time the Society Library, like most libraries, was built on the alcove model, a long triple-height hall flanked by two-level alcoves of books. (Surviving examples include the University Club library or the old Avery Library at Columbia.) These were particularly agreeable spaces, with a table and comfortable chairs, where the visitor could read or even snooze in relative privacy.

The alcove revamped in honor of Mr. Green was finished in 1878. It featured an inset portrait of Green by Don Raimund Madrazo, a Spaniard who studied in Paris and developed a millionaire portraiture practice whose subjects included William H. ("the public be damned") Vanderbilt. The woodwork was done in the Marcotte studios and designed by the mysterious Sidney V. Stratton. Historian Mosette Broderick says that Kennedy was a mentor to Stratton, who was of a genteel background and trained at the …cole des Beaux-Arts with Charles McKim. Stratton is now utterly obscure, but for several years the letterhead of McKim, Mead & White listed him along with the three partners. He evidently shared space with the firm and practiced alongside them. Samuel White, great-grandson of Stanford White, an architect and expert on the firm, says of Stratton, "if only some of the interiors credited to Stratton are really his, then he's one of America's greatest interior designers."

To judge from surviving fragments and photographs, Stratton designed a lovely aesthetic-movement room separated from the main hall of the Library by a screen of intricate fretwork. On the west wall of the alcove was the present bronze plaque of gratitude from the trustees plus, below that, the motto Cuncta Suo Tempore, an abbreviation of an Ecclesiastes passage translated as "God made all things good in their time." Period photographs show a sister panel with a central clock faced in what was probably polished marble, with bronze numbering, and two smaller dials which may have been a barometer and an anemometer. Although the entire assembly is now installed in the form of a mantelpiece, it was originally mounted at the top of a sloping reference table. The table would have been used either for the art stored in a set of flat files below or for the folio-sized works shelved to the right and left. It appears that Stratton used several woods: the black detailing may be ebony, and the low-relief floral carving on either side of the portrait, perhaps walnut, is one of my favorite things in the Library. The ceiling bears a series of stenciled floral designs which seem to imitate marquetry, although that is out of character with the artistic background of this work, which emphasized frank naturalism. Writing in the October 1884 issue of Century Magazine, critic Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer singled out the Green Art Alcove as "a charming piece of work."

The Library moved into its present quarters in 1937, taking over the John S. Rogers townhouse on 79th Street. By this time the old alcove system had fallen out of use, and the back half of the building was converted into the current warren of book stacks. A comparison with the University Place photographs shows how the Green Art Alcove was adapted to its new space on Stack 12. The present chair and table show in the photographs, but the table was reduced to fit its new quarters—a careful observer can lean over the far side and see evidence of the change to the apron. The shelves, display cases, folio drawers, all but one of the chairs, and the bronze torchéres were lost. Also gone is a stained-glass window, perhaps four feet by five feet, on the south side of the room opposite the sliding door. It showed two central figures, Knowledge and Prudence, surrounded by portraits of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Chaucer.

Despite its reduction in size and furnishing, the Green Art Alcove is still the best place to work in the Library. The Alcove evokes our rich past, like the nineteenth-century card catalog in the Reference Room or the charging ledger showing Melville's borrowings. This account may only increase competition for this unusual space, earning its author some well-deserved dirty looks—especially if he is sitting there at the time.