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On this day in New York · May 23, 1911

The Public Library Opens on Fifth Avenue

A president showed up, fifteen thousand people packed the marble halls, and two stone lions took up their post on Fifth Avenue for good.

The facts

Dedication
President Taft presided on May 23, 1911, before about 15,000 guests
Public opening
Doors opened to everyone at 9 a.m. on May 24, 1911; more than 50,000 people came through by closing at 10 p.m.
Architects
Carrere and Hastings, in the Beaux-Arts style
Cost
$9 million, sixteen years from design to completion

On May 23, 1911, President William Howard Taft stood on Fifth Avenue and formally opened the New York Public Library's new main branch, with Governor John Alden Dix and Mayor William Jay Gaynor beside him and about 15,000 guests packed in for the ceremony. The building, designed by Carrere and Hastings in the Beaux-Arts style, had taken sixteen years and nine million dollars to go from cornerstone to marble reading room. The doors opened to the actual public the next morning, May 24, and more than 50,000 New Yorkers walked in before the library closed that night at 10 p.m. The first book request was a publicity stunt for a title the library didn't even own; the first real one, a study of Nietzsche and Tolstoy, was requested at 9:08 a.m. and delivered seven minutes later, proof the whole operation actually worked.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. tens of thousands went to the Library's "jewel in the crown"

    Wikipedia, describing the crowds on the library's first public day, May 24, 1911

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. The building, which took 16 years to design and complete, was the largest marble building ever built in the U.S. at the time it opened in 1911.

    The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building fact sheet

    Source: The New York Public Library

Why it still matters

It handed every New Yorker, not just the ones who could afford a private club library, free access to millions of books under one marble roof, and it put two lions out front that would outlast the mayors, the Depression-era nicknames, and every renovation since.

Sources

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