9 ms·

The New York Public Library’s Last, Secret Apartments (2016)

209 points by jason_slack 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago
I was in new York once. I was amazed by: 1) Subway system, and its fauna. 2) The state of historical, and not so much building, and that people were still living in them.
- larrik 6y ago
  Every time I go, I think the entire city feels like the inside of an auto repair shop. Thick layers of car exhaust over everything.
  - cyberlurker 6y ago
    Thank Robert Moses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses “ But start looking at the decline of, and disinvestment in, New York’s rail lines—from the subway to commuter rails like the Long Island Rail Road—and you’ll find that those problems go back much, much further. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they seem to lead to one man in particular: Robert Moses.” https://ny.curbed.com/2017/7/27/15985648/nyc-subway-robert-moses-power-broker https://ny.curbed.com/2017/7/27/15985648/nyc-subway-robert-m...
    - larrik 6y ago
      The subways have even more of the "auto shop" effect!
      - cyberlurker 6y ago
        Grimy walls aren’t even close to the top of the to-do list. The subway stop where Michael Jackson filmed part of the music video for “Bad”,Hoyt–Schermerhorn, had a piece of the ceiling hanging off and almost touching the tracks last time I was there. I love NYC and the subway but the maintenance absolutely depresses me.
  - ericlewis 6y ago
    grand central's roof used to be absolutely disgusting, if you look close- they left one tiny bit where it stayed uncleaned. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grand-central-ceiling-dark-patch https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grand-central-ceiling-da...
    - lqet 6y ago
      Here is a picture of how it looked before the cleaning: https://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Grand-Central-Terminal-During-Restoration-Main-Terminal-2.jpg https://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Grand-...
motohagiography 6y ago
When I see beautiful old buildings neglected like this, it's heartbreaking to me. The only reason nobody lives there and makes a storied life of it that enriches the life of the city is because of some quirk of bureaucracy. The converse is when someone does inhabit something like this, it's criticized as a "sweetheart deal" with the implication if not the outright accusation of corruption. In Toronto, we have an island downtown with homes on 100y leases that cannot be re-sold at market rates, but also cannot be willed to heirs, and that has a pretty transparent waiting list system, which still gets periodic criticism as corrupt. These library apartments could be revitalized to operate on a similar scheme, even though there would be huge risk of them going to the politically connected and patronage. Political classes tend not to understand that it is these exceptions that produce the stories that provide the character that makes cities desirable, and not their rules. I lived in a historical apartment building for several years, and it has occupied a psychogeographical landmark in the culture of the city for generations, appearing in various novels and with a cast of storied occupants. They were too large and expensive and a bit out of the way for fashionable rentals, so the people there always had a reason to be oddly both transient and yet still maintaining the refinement they were used to. Society divorcees and scandalized people in transition, politicians from remote ridings, elderly widows, downwardly mobile sons of establishment families, mistresses, professional artists and musicians who needed to be in the city but could never raise enough for a down payment - these characters and archetypes form the mythology of cities, and buildings like those library apartments and other historical buildings contribute to it. The promise of hidden beauty and riches and the ability to find it is the essence of the appeal of a city. I hope they find a way to open them up again.
- userbinator 6y ago
  I hope they find a way to open them up again. Moreover, I hope they get preserved and restored, not "modernized", because they are definitely an interesting piece of history.
  - untog 6y ago
    That's difficult. Living standards are much higher than they used to be. Should they be restored as actual usable apartments? If so you're going to think about the heating, cooling, the insulation etc. etc. etc. Should they be restored as historical exhibit? OK, sure. But then the space isn't really being used. IMO these are interesting but they're not such an important part of history that they must be preserved exactly the way they are today.
JackFr 6y ago
A small detail glossed over in the article is that New York City has three separate library systems. The New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library were all founded in the mid-19th century years before the creation of New York City and it's five boroughs in 1898. The New York Public library built 30 Carnegie libraries, the Brooklyn Public Library 21 and the Queens Public Library 7.
- derefr 6y ago
  That’s fascinating to me. Isn’t much of the point of NYC’s boroughs (i.e. purely-administrative divisions of a legally-conglomerated city) that infrastructure that makes sense to centralize/share between boroughs, can be centralized/shared, much more practically than it can under separate city corporations? Why, then, does the distinction in library systems remain? Is it advantageous somehow? (Certainly not for the people wanting to check out a book via inter-branch loan.)
  - Tokkemon 6y ago
    I think it's just historical inertia. There's no real advantage to combining them since they mostly serve their local borough population. Each has their own central branch which is a magnet for research on various topics. The NYPL is just so much larger in terms of collections so it outshines the others, but Queens and Brooklyn are really solid library systems on their own.
    - JackFr 6y ago
      According to Wikipedia, the Queens Public Library is in fact the largest circulating public library in the country.
      - embarcadero 6y ago
        "one of". It's unlikely to be bigger than NYPL, which has 92 locations to QPL's 62.
mgr86 6y ago
I spent the last half of my 20s and the beginning of my 30s living in a carriage house of an old Tudor revival mansion in New England. The building itself was purchased in the 60s and used as a research institute. Loosely affiliated with the large university in town. I worked at there as a software engineer by day, and took care of the property the rest of the time. There was no shortage of projects. My girlfriend moved in with me eventually. We returned there after our honeymoon, and our son was most likely conceived there. I miss it often. I still work there, but covid has kept us away. This article reminds me of that time in my life. Thanks for sharing.
- ed312 6y ago
  Would you be willing to provide more detail either here or via email? This story fascinates me as someone in a similar situation living in New England! I am completely exhausted and done with the modern 1+4 stick slapped together "new construction luxury apartments" aka won't last 50 years.
  - mgr86 6y ago
    I would be happy to supply further information via email. I'd send an email, but not sure where to (profile emails are not visible to other users. :)
  - therealx 6y ago
    Not op, but a good friend of mine did this. Worked in tech by day and rennovated a carriage house by night - all the way from a literal barn to a "fully rennovated" space, all done by himself and friend/family help. Granted, he's a smart guy, and has people he can call with questions that are outside his expertise, but a carraige house is a cool project as the size is manageable, and each problem is much more suited to the scale of 1-3 people working on it. Happy to answer any questions via email as well.
derefr 6y ago
Reminds me of the apartments built into London’s Palace of Westminster. (They’re for the current speakers of the House of Lords and House of Commons to live in, if they so choose.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
delgaudm 6y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847
embarcadero 6y ago
The NYPL board has discussed renovating and re-purposing these apartments. It's a good idea, though it should be pointed out that this board has a history of foolish, reckless, and possibly corrupt dealing, as when they sold off the Donnell Branch and nearly destroyed the iconic Main Library on 42nd & 5th (the one with the lions; look up "Central Library Plan" for details). This year, SaveNYPL.org got federal and state protection for NYC's remaining 56 Carnegie libraries: https://www.savenypl.org/major-victory-landmarking-nycs-carnegie-libraries/ https://www.savenypl.org/major-victory-landmarking-nycs-carn... Now we are working on a local designation. This is important because real estate developers have many of these buildings in the crosshairs. Currently, hand in hand with the NYPL and the Robin Hood Foundation, they are looking to tear down the Inwood Branch, under the guise of building a shiny new library, inside a big condo with some "affordable housing". A few years ago, they did tear down the Brooklyn Heights Branch, replacing it with a smaller library inside a large condo (there is an argument that civic works ought to be freestanding to communicate import). Before that, the Donnell Library was torn down, replaced year later with a library that is a fraction of the original and squeezed into a basement beneath a luxury hotel, the latter valued at a multiple of what the NYPL got in the deal. And for a while, the developers behind the Barclays Center were itching to tear down the Pacific Branch in Brooklyn. These libraries are important civic spaces. Whatever your feelings about paper vs digital, there is no denying that NYC's libraries are heavily used, and that they constitute an important part of the fabric of our civic life, a place where New Yorkers of all stripes congregate and mingle. Historical footnote: NYPL is in fact a private institution chartered by New York State, formed through the merger of the Astor and Lenox libraries, to which was added a gift from the Tilden Foundation. It serves the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, while the Queens Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library have their own systems (Brooklyn was a separate city until 1898). To further confuse matters, many of the libraries NYPL runs, including the Main Library, are owned by NYC, while others are belong to NYPL itself. Scott Sherman's book, Patience & Fortitude, provides a good, pithy history.
- beowulfey 6y ago
  No reason why those groups couldn’t be putting libraries in all their new buildings. I think the public would benefit more from ADDITIONAL libraries, particularly in underserved areas, vs replacing ones that already exist!
rch 6y ago
It seems reasonable that modern libraries should be able to provide housing like this, intended for the people who provide lessons in e.g. computer use, bee keeping, and laser cutter operation (to list a few of the options available at my local branches).
jccalhoun 6y ago
the bottom of the page has a link to a video of one of the apartments: https://youtu.be/_VfJsTKHBT4 https://youtu.be/_VfJsTKHBT4 the date says 2018 but the video looks very similar to the images so I suspect it was taken at the same time the main story was.
feralimal 6y ago
This building doesn't even look like it was originally a library. It looks like it was repurposed to be a library.

209 points by jason_slack 6y ago

I was in new York once. I was amazed by: 1) Subway system, and its fauna. 2) The state of historical, and not so much building, and that people were still living in them.

larrik 6y ago
Every time I go, I think the entire city feels like the inside of an auto repair shop. Thick layers of car exhaust over everything.
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  Thank Robert Moses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses “ But start looking at the decline of, and disinvestment in, New York’s rail lines—from the subway to commuter rails like the Long Island Rail Road—and you’ll find that those problems go back much, much further. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they seem to lead to one man in particular: Robert Moses.” https://ny.curbed.com/2017/7/27/15985648/nyc-subway-robert-moses-power-broker https://ny.curbed.com/2017/7/27/15985648/nyc-subway-robert-m...
  - larrik 6y ago
    The subways have even more of the "auto shop" effect!
    - cyberlurker 6y ago
      Grimy walls aren’t even close to the top of the to-do list. The subway stop where Michael Jackson filmed part of the music video for “Bad”,Hoyt–Schermerhorn, had a piece of the ceiling hanging off and almost touching the tracks last time I was there. I love NYC and the subway but the maintenance absolutely depresses me.
- ericlewis 6y ago
  grand central's roof used to be absolutely disgusting, if you look close- they left one tiny bit where it stayed uncleaned. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grand-central-ceiling-dark-patch https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grand-central-ceiling-da...
  - lqet 6y ago
    Here is a picture of how it looked before the cleaning: https://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Grand-Central-Terminal-During-Restoration-Main-Terminal-2.jpg https://untappedcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Grand-...

motohagiography 6y ago

When I see beautiful old buildings neglected like this, it's heartbreaking to me. The only reason nobody lives there and makes a storied life of it that enriches the life of the city is because of some quirk of bureaucracy. The converse is when someone does inhabit something like this, it's criticized as a "sweetheart deal" with the implication if not the outright accusation of corruption. In Toronto, we have an island downtown with homes on 100y leases that cannot be re-sold at market rates, but also cannot be willed to heirs, and that has a pretty transparent waiting list system, which still gets periodic criticism as corrupt. These library apartments could be revitalized to operate on a similar scheme, even though there would be huge risk of them going to the politically connected and patronage. Political classes tend not to understand that it is these exceptions that produce the stories that provide the character that makes cities desirable, and not their rules. I lived in a historical apartment building for several years, and it has occupied a psychogeographical landmark in the culture of the city for generations, appearing in various novels and with a cast of storied occupants. They were too large and expensive and a bit out of the way for fashionable rentals, so the people there always had a reason to be oddly both transient and yet still maintaining the refinement they were used to. Society divorcees and scandalized people in transition, politicians from remote ridings, elderly widows, downwardly mobile sons of establishment families, mistresses, professional artists and musicians who needed to be in the city but could never raise enough for a down payment - these characters and archetypes form the mythology of cities, and buildings like those library apartments and other historical buildings contribute to it. The promise of hidden beauty and riches and the ability to find it is the essence of the appeal of a city. I hope they find a way to open them up again.

userbinator 6y ago
I hope they find a way to open them up again. Moreover, I hope they get preserved and restored, not "modernized", because they are definitely an interesting piece of history.
- untog 6y ago
  That's difficult. Living standards are much higher than they used to be. Should they be restored as actual usable apartments? If so you're going to think about the heating, cooling, the insulation etc. etc. etc. Should they be restored as historical exhibit? OK, sure. But then the space isn't really being used. IMO these are interesting but they're not such an important part of history that they must be preserved exactly the way they are today.

JackFr 6y ago

A small detail glossed over in the article is that New York City has three separate library systems. The New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library were all founded in the mid-19th century years before the creation of New York City and it's five boroughs in 1898. The New York Public library built 30 Carnegie libraries, the Brooklyn Public Library 21 and the Queens Public Library 7.

derefr 6y ago
That’s fascinating to me. Isn’t much of the point of NYC’s boroughs (i.e. purely-administrative divisions of a legally-conglomerated city) that infrastructure that makes sense to centralize/share between boroughs, can be centralized/shared, much more practically than it can under separate city corporations? Why, then, does the distinction in library systems remain? Is it advantageous somehow? (Certainly not for the people wanting to check out a book via inter-branch loan.)
- Tokkemon 6y ago
  I think it's just historical inertia. There's no real advantage to combining them since they mostly serve their local borough population. Each has their own central branch which is a magnet for research on various topics. The NYPL is just so much larger in terms of collections so it outshines the others, but Queens and Brooklyn are really solid library systems on their own.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    According to Wikipedia, the Queens Public Library is in fact the largest circulating public library in the country.
    - embarcadero 6y ago
      "one of". It's unlikely to be bigger than NYPL, which has 92 locations to QPL's 62.

mgr86 6y ago

I spent the last half of my 20s and the beginning of my 30s living in a carriage house of an old Tudor revival mansion in New England. The building itself was purchased in the 60s and used as a research institute. Loosely affiliated with the large university in town. I worked at there as a software engineer by day, and took care of the property the rest of the time. There was no shortage of projects. My girlfriend moved in with me eventually. We returned there after our honeymoon, and our son was most likely conceived there. I miss it often. I still work there, but covid has kept us away. This article reminds me of that time in my life. Thanks for sharing.

ed312 6y ago
Would you be willing to provide more detail either here or via email? This story fascinates me as someone in a similar situation living in New England! I am completely exhausted and done with the modern 1+4 stick slapped together "new construction luxury apartments" aka won't last 50 years.
- mgr86 6y ago
  I would be happy to supply further information via email. I'd send an email, but not sure where to (profile emails are not visible to other users. :)
- therealx 6y ago
  Not op, but a good friend of mine did this. Worked in tech by day and rennovated a carriage house by night - all the way from a literal barn to a "fully rennovated" space, all done by himself and friend/family help. Granted, he's a smart guy, and has people he can call with questions that are outside his expertise, but a carraige house is a cool project as the size is manageable, and each problem is much more suited to the scale of 1-3 people working on it. Happy to answer any questions via email as well.

derefr 6y ago

Reminds me of the apartments built into London’s Palace of Westminster. (They’re for the current speakers of the House of Lords and House of Commons to live in, if they so choose.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

delgaudm 6y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847

embarcadero 6y ago

The NYPL board has discussed renovating and re-purposing these apartments. It's a good idea, though it should be pointed out that this board has a history of foolish, reckless, and possibly corrupt dealing, as when they sold off the Donnell Branch and nearly destroyed the iconic Main Library on 42nd & 5th (the one with the lions; look up "Central Library Plan" for details). This year, SaveNYPL.org got federal and state protection for NYC's remaining 56 Carnegie libraries: https://www.savenypl.org/major-victory-landmarking-nycs-carnegie-libraries/ https://www.savenypl.org/major-victory-landmarking-nycs-carn... Now we are working on a local designation. This is important because real estate developers have many of these buildings in the crosshairs. Currently, hand in hand with the NYPL and the Robin Hood Foundation, they are looking to tear down the Inwood Branch, under the guise of building a shiny new library, inside a big condo with some "affordable housing". A few years ago, they did tear down the Brooklyn Heights Branch, replacing it with a smaller library inside a large condo (there is an argument that civic works ought to be freestanding to communicate import). Before that, the Donnell Library was torn down, replaced year later with a library that is a fraction of the original and squeezed into a basement beneath a luxury hotel, the latter valued at a multiple of what the NYPL got in the deal. And for a while, the developers behind the Barclays Center were itching to tear down the Pacific Branch in Brooklyn. These libraries are important civic spaces. Whatever your feelings about paper vs digital, there is no denying that NYC's libraries are heavily used, and that they constitute an important part of the fabric of our civic life, a place where New Yorkers of all stripes congregate and mingle. Historical footnote: NYPL is in fact a private institution chartered by New York State, formed through the merger of the Astor and Lenox libraries, to which was added a gift from the Tilden Foundation. It serves the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, while the Queens Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library have their own systems (Brooklyn was a separate city until 1898). To further confuse matters, many of the libraries NYPL runs, including the Main Library, are owned by NYC, while others are belong to NYPL itself. Scott Sherman's book, Patience & Fortitude, provides a good, pithy history.

beowulfey 6y ago
No reason why those groups couldn’t be putting libraries in all their new buildings. I think the public would benefit more from ADDITIONAL libraries, particularly in underserved areas, vs replacing ones that already exist!

rch 6y ago

It seems reasonable that modern libraries should be able to provide housing like this, intended for the people who provide lessons in e.g. computer use, bee keeping, and laser cutter operation (to list a few of the options available at my local branches).

jccalhoun 6y ago

the bottom of the page has a link to a video of one of the apartments: https://youtu.be/_VfJsTKHBT4 https://youtu.be/_VfJsTKHBT4 the date says 2018 but the video looks very similar to the images so I suspect it was taken at the same time the main story was.

feralimal 6y ago

This building doesn't even look like it was originally a library. It looks like it was repurposed to be a library.