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Check Out The New York Public Library
by Ken Krayeske
Hartford, CT
"But above all things, truth beareth away the victory," reads the New York City Public Library's motto, etched into its granite walls.
For those disheartened by the deceit so prevalent in today's world, these words provide hope. To me, the story of the founding and construction of the New York City Public Library provides an example for the 40-Year Plan to emulate.
In 1886, the Tilden Trust willed a significant sum to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York." Attorney Samuel Tilden was the Al Gore of his time. Tilden won the popular vote in the 1876 presidential election, but lost the electoral college to Rutherford B. Hayes. Would Gore ever endow such a library?
The Tilden Trust merged with the Astor and Lenox libraries to form the New York Public Library May 23, 1895. This cooperation conceived the library system and its 85 branches that dot the five boroughs today.
Dr. John Shaw Billings, the library's first director, sketched out the plans for the New York Public Library building on a postcard in 1897. Shortly after, Billings and company sited the new building where the colossal Croton Reservoir stood - the corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue.
Workers dismantled reservoir for two years before construction on the library could begin. By 1906, the library's exterior walls were up. Come May 24, 1911, President William Howard Taft delivered the opening address.
The marble steps, giant lions and fluted columns weren't cheap. The city and its philanthropists spent $29 million, about two-thirds of which came from city coffers, and the remaining third came from those rich white men - Lenox, Tilden and Astor.
Today, that $29 million would be about $500 million. Sitting at one of the massive white oak tables in the Rose Reading Room, staring at the partly cloudy sky painted onto the ceiling, I racked my brains for an American city in the past 10 years that had a public/private partnership rivaling the New York Public Library.
Cleveland's Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame and its pro sports stadiums? Boston's Big Dig? Those can only be enjoyed by those who can afford tickets or cars. The NYPL is free to anyone.
Hartford's convention center? Don't make me laugh. Imagine if we put all that dough from pigboy Rowland's stinky bribery scandal into the Hartford Public Library instead? Would the Tomassos have kicked in a third of the HPL's renovation costs? No. And no one who lives in Hartford can spend a lazy rainy afternoon browsing the convention center they and their children paid for.
HPL's recent renovations, while awe-inspiring, could have been so much different, so much more, if we as a self-governing people decided literacy and resource sharing merited massive investment. It still probably wouldn't draw First Librarian Laura Bush and her hubby George W. to celebrate.
Let's not kid ourselves - the Gilded Age's core dilemmas of imperialism and poverty haunt America in 2005. Those philanthropists made their money through exploitation, and the donations that created the New York Public Library and Hartford's magnificent park system was driven as much by ego as civic pride.
Yet I can't shake the feeling that that civic pride is missing today. How many years before the truth that cooperation benefits the community emerges victorious over the competitive private economic development schemes that dominate our landscape?
4/28/05
