[URBAN NOTE] "The Unruly Pleasures of the Mid-Manhattan Library"

[rfmcdonald]

Ada Calhoun's essay in The New Yorker about the pleasures of the Mid-Manhattan Library is superb. So many places to see, so little time!

The Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library is situated a block south of the majestic main branch, on the same strip of Fifth Avenue near Bryant Park, but the two buildings are night and day. The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is an imposing marble temple, a shrine to scholarship replete with tributes to the Astors, a Sistine Chapel-like reading room, experts in every conceivable field of study, and, during the holidays, a towering Christmas tree for tourists to pose in front of. The Mid-Manhattan, by contrast, can appear to outsiders as a run-down hangout, where New Yorkers unbathed, unhinged, or just perennially unoccupied spend hours staring at the same page of a prop book or manically writing on wrinkled yellow notepads, like an army of latter-day Joe Goulds. Beneath the bleak, utilitarian architecture is an anything-goes spirit. You can plug in your power cord wherever you like, even if you have to weave it through three other people’s desks. More than once I have observed technically prohibited behavior: a man watching questionable material on his phone, a woman giving herself an improvised shower in the restroom. The only rule I’ve seen stringently enforced is the one against sleeping; the second someone nods off over his book a guard appears to say, “Excuse me, sir.”

As a freelancer whose small Brooklyn apartment was long ago colonized by Legos, I cherish each version of the library work experience. While my writer friends invest in writing rooms or loiter at cafés, I prefer to settle in at one of the New York Public Library’s myriad branches. Recently, I was granted another spell in one of the two glorious by-their-leave semi-private study rooms inside the main building. The air there is sweet, the mood calm. When you request books, they magically appear on your shelf. And yet the place can be intimidating for the uninitiated. The guards at Schwarzman do not tend to greet visitors with particular warmth. When I arrived at 10 A.M. the other day, just as the library was opening, the woman who unlocked the doors yelled, “No luggage! No luggage!” to two young women, who looked confused and then rolled their suitcases sadly away. The closing of the glorious Rose Reading Room for repairs, meanwhile, has thrown independent scholars into exile—you see them camped out with their laptops in various Schwarzman hallways and anterooms, like passengers at LaGuardia whose flight has been cancelled. (I had feared that the room would be closed forever, but the N.Y.P.L. has announced that it’s set to reopen ahead of schedule, in late fall of this year.)

My husband refuses to go to the main branch, because he says he was shamed by staff when he tried to decipher their byzantine system of ordering books. I, too, have been scolded twice there over the years, both times by fellow researchers in the Wertheim study room, where tables teem with academics toiling on books about capitalism and spies and C. S. Lewis. Once, a woman at my table leaned over and said angrily, “I can hear that!” as she pointed at my headphones, which I was using to transcribe an interview. I could barely hear the recording myself, so I think she may have been hallucinating. Another time, I was in the Wertheim Room with the “Project Runway” co-host Tim Gunn, with whom I was collaborating on a book of fashion history. We were flipping through some old fashion magazines, tracing the evolution of denim advertising. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and the windows were open, letting in the loud noise of bagpipes from the parade passing below, so we didn’t think much of our whispering. Yet soon enough we heard the sound, from the other side of a partition, of a woman clearing her throat. We didn’t think it could be for us, so we kept looking through our book. Again, the throat clearing, then a strident voice: “This is a silent workspace. Conversations should be held outside.” Tim and I looked at each other in alarm, packed up our books, and decided to go to lunch early. “Did you get a load of the crowd in there?” Tim said as we left. “It’s like being inside a Roz Chast cartoon.”

If the New York Public Library branches were colleges, the Schwarzman Building would be Harvard or Yale and the Mid-Manhattan would be a community college. And then, I suppose, the stately Society Library, on Seventy-ninth Street, where I am also a member, would be Oxford. When you’re in the Society Library (which was founded in the eighteenth century; there is a charter from King George III hanging on the wall) you are reminded of the many advantages of having money: the workspaces are clean and well-lit; there are even some desks tucked away in the stacks, which make you feel like you’re in a tree house built out of books. The upper floors of the building are open only to members who pay an annual fee, but there are no library cards: as you come into the building, you tell your name to the person at the front desk, who looks you up in the computer and then genteelly gestures you ahead. In the cozy children’s room, you can say to the friendly, wildly well-educated librarian, “My son is looking for some Harry Potter-ish audiobooks,” and you will leave with ten genius selections and an impeccably curated brochure listing the best books for children who are fans of the series.