About Us

Members' Room

The Members' Room, on the second floor front, is open for reading and silent study. Keyboard use is not allowed. Current newspapers and periodicals are located here. The Members' Room occasionally closes for Library events; notification is posted on the door on the day of the event.

Library members reading periodicals in the Members' Room.

Historical Note

The Rogers family's library became the Members' Reading Room, or Members' Room, and has remained more or less the same since the Library moved in. From Books and People:

It had bookshelves on three sides, and a fireplace and mantel with a large mirror on the west wall. Iron grills for the shelves on each side of the fireplace protected the John Sharpe and Winthrop collections. Books in fine bindings added color and decoration to the other shelves. Long tables for the current magazines, four small writing tables, a sofa, easy chairs, handsome lamps, a rust colored rug, reddish rust draperies had all been made or purchased especialy for the splendid room, and testified to the fine taste of the committee in charge, who had also decreed ashtrays! Someone said it lacked only a bar to make it the finest club in town.

The library in the Rogers family residence, before the New York Society Library moved in.