In 2014, the New York Public Library (NYPL) cancelled controversial plans to renovate its flagship Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in Midtown Manhattan. The proposal had called for selling off the library’s Mid-Manhattan Branch—kitty-corner from the Schwarzman on Fifth Avenue—to help fund the transformation of the magnificent main Beaux-Arts building from a research center into an exhibition space and a library focused on digital resources. The extensive interior redesign by Foster + Partners incited protests from preservationists and scholars alike before finally being shelved.
So, on June 1, when the newly renovated Mid-Manhattan Branch—now named the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL)—opens for browsing, Foster’s scheme may fade once and for all into hazy urban lore. Indeed, the library’s leadership whisper about the past furor as “the plans we shall not name.”
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