WThis list includes libraries located in New York City active in the 19th century. Included are public libraries, academic libraries, medical libraries, church libraries, government libraries, circulating libraries, and subscription libraries.
WThe 53rd Street Library is a branch of the New York Public Library at 18 West 53rd Street, just west of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The library is composed of three floors, including two basement levels, and contains a glass facade. The building is located on the south side of 53rd Street, across from the Museum of Modern Art, and located adjacent to 666 Fifth Avenue to the east. It opened in 2016 as a replacement for the Donnell Library Center, which occupied a building at 20 West 53rd Street. The Donnell Library Center operated from 1955 until 2008, when its building was razed and a 46-story hotel and residential building constructed on the site.
WThe Harry Belafonte 115th Street Branch of the New York Public Library is a historic library building located in Harlem, New York City. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built in 1907–1908 and opened on November 6, 1908. It is a three-story-high, three-bay-wide building faced in deeply rusticated gray limestone in a Neo Italian Renaissance style. The branch was one of 65 built by the New York Public Library with funds provided by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, 11 of them designed by McKim, Mead & White. The building is 50 feet wide and features three evenly spaced arched openings on the first floor.
WThe Astor Library was a free public library in the East Village, Manhattan, developed primarily through the collaboration of New York City merchant John Jacob Astor and New England educator and bibliographer Joseph Cogswell. It was primarily meant as a research library, and its books did not circulate. It opened to the public in 1854, and in 1895 consolidated with the Lenox Library and the Tilden Foundation to become the New York Public Library (NYPL). During this time, its building was expanded twice, in 1859, and 1881.
WThe Austrian Cultural Forum New York is one of Austria’s two cultural representation offices in the United States; the other is in Washington, D.C. It is part of the worldwide network of Austrian Cultural Forums of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs.
WThe Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library is a library located in Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in the New York City. It is the largest architecture library in the world. Serving Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Avery Library collects books and periodicals in architecture, historic preservation, art history, painting, sculpting, graphic arts, decorative arts, city planning, real estate, and archaeology, as well as archival materials primarily documenting 19th- and 20th-century American architects and architecture. The architectural, fine arts, and archival collections are non-circulating. The Ware Collection, mainly books on urban planning and real estate development, does circulate.
WThe Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, often referred to as simply Bobst Library or Bobst, is the main library at New York University in Manhattan, New York City. The library is located at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz pedestrian plaza, across from the southeast corner of Washington Square Park and next to Gould Plaza.
WButler Library is located on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University at 535 West 114th Street, in Manhattan, New York City. It is the university's largest single library with over 2 million volumes, as well as one of the largest buildings on the campus. The Neoclassical style building was built in 1931–1934 to a design by James Gamble Rogers.
WThe Raymond Fogelman Social Sciences and Humanities Library is the flagship library of The New School university. It is located at 55 West 13th Street, in New York City's Greenwich Village.
WThe Frick Art Reference Library is the research arm of The Frick Collection. It is located at 10 East 71st Street in New York City. The library is housed in a six-story building designed by the architect John Russell Pope.
WThe General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, was founded on November 17, 1785, by 22 men who gathered in Walter Heyer's public-house on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan. The aims of the General Society were to provide cultural, educational and social services to families of skilled craftsmen. The General Society during this early period celebrated the mutuality and centrality of the craft community. Besides its charitable activities, the society played a prominent part in the festivities that marked patriotic holidays, carrying banners emblazoned with its slogan 'By hammer and hand all arts do stand', echoing the motto of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths.
WThe Grolier Club is a private club and society of bibliophiles in New York City. Founded in January 1884, it is the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America. The club is named after Jean Grolier de Servières, Viscount d'Aguisy, Treasurer General of France, whose library was famous; his motto, "Io. Grolierii et amicorum" [of or belonging to Jean Grolier and his friends], suggested his generosity in sharing books. The Club's stated objective is "the literary study of the arts pertaining to the production of books, including the occasional publication of books designed to illustrate, promote and encourage these arts; and the acquisition, furnishing and maintenance of a suitable club building for the safekeeping of its property, wherein meetings, lectures and exhibitions shall take place from time to time ..."
WThe Hamilton Grange Branch of the New York Public Library is a historic library building located in Hamilton Heights, New York City. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White and built in 1905–1906. The branch was one of 65 built by the New York Public Library with funds provided by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, 11 of them designed by McKim, Mead & White. It is a three-story-high, five-bay-wide building faced in deeply rusticated gray limestone in an Italian Renaissance style. The building features round arched openings on the first floor and bronze lamps and grilles.
WThe Hispanic Society of America is a museum and reference library for the study of the arts and cultures of Spain and Portugal and their former colonies in Latin America, the Philippines and Portuguese India. Founded in 1904 by Archer M. Huntington, the institution remains at its original location in a 1908 Beaux Arts building on Audubon Terrace in the lower Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City in the United States. A second building, on the north side of the terrace, was added in 1930. Exterior sculpture in front of that building includes work by Anna Hyatt Huntington and nine major reliefs by the Swiss-American sculptor Berthold Nebel, a commission that took ten years to complete. The Hispanic Society complex was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012.
WJapan Society is a non-profit organization formed in 1907 to promote friendly relations between the United States and Japan. Its headquarters, the youngest landmark building in New York, was designed by Junzo Yoshimura and opened in 1971 at 333 East 47th Street near the United Nations. With a focus on promoting "arts and culture, public policy, business, language, and education," the organization has regularly held events in its many facilities, including a library, art gallery, and theater, since its opening. After suspending all activities during World War II, Japan Society expanded under the leadership of John D. Rockefeller III.
WThe Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library, once known as the Jefferson Market Courthouse, is a National Historic Landmark located at 425 Avenue of the Americas, on the southwest corner of West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, on a triangular plot formed by Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street. It was originally built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse from 1874 to 1877, and was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers of the firm of Vaux and Withers.
WThe Lenox Library was a library incorporated and endowed in 1870. It was both an architectural and intellectual landmark in Gilded Age-era New York City. It was founded by bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox, and located on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the building, which was considered one of the city's most notable buildings, until its destruction in 1912.
WThe Lloyd George Sealy Library is the campus library at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY). Located in Haaren Hall, the library specializes in criminal justice-related materials.
WThe Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL), also known as the Mid-Manhattan Library, is a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) at the southeast corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is diagonally across from the New York Public Library Main Branch and Bryant Park to the northwest.
WThe Morgan Library & Museum, formerly the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and research library in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Its address is 225 Madison Avenue, at the intersection with East 36th Street.
WThe New York Academy of Medicine is a health policy and advocacy organization founded in 1847 by a group of leading New York metropolitan area physicians as a voice for the medical profession in medical practice and public health reform. The early leaders of the academy were invested in the reform movements of the day and worked to improve public health by focusing on the living conditions of the poor. In 1866, the academy was instrumental in the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Health, the first modern municipal public health authority in the United States and the precursor of today's Department of Health. In recent years the academy has functioned as an effective advocate in public health reform, as well as a major center for health education. As of 2016, the academy will celebrate its 169th year. The academy's work now focuses on advancing urban health in New York City and around the world. Today, the academy has over three-thousand fellows, that include doctors, nurses, health care administrators, and professionals in all fields dedicated to maintaining and improving health.
WThe New York Law Institute is the oldest circulating law library in New York City and is open to Institute members and to scholars of history and the law.
WThe Center for Fiction, originally called the New York Mercantile Library, is a not-for-profit organization in New York City, with offices currently located at 15 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Prior to their move in early 2018, The Center for Fiction was located at 17 East 47th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues in Midtown Manhattan. The Center works to promote fiction and literature and to give support to writers. It originated in 1820 as the Mercantile Library and in 2005 changed its name to the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, although it presents itself as simply "The Center for Fiction".
WThe New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States and the third largest in the world. It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing.
WBattery Park City is a mainly residential 92-acre (37 ha) planned community and neighborhood on the west side of the southern tip of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by the Hudson River on the west, the Hudson River shoreline on the north and south, and the West Side Highway on the east. The neighborhood is named for Battery Park, located directly to the south.
WThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one of the branch libraries.
WThe Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, commonly known as the Main Branch or the New York Public Library, is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system and a landmark in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The branch, one of four research libraries in the library system, contains nine separate divisions. The structure contains four stories open to the public. The main entrance steps are at Fifth Avenue at its intersection with East 41st Street. As of 2015, the branch contains an estimated 2.5 million volumes in its stacks. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark, a National Register of Historic Places site, and a New York City designated landmark in the 1960s.
WThe New York Society Library (NYSL) is the oldest cultural institution in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the New York Society as a subscription library. During the time when New York was the capital of the United States, it was the de facto Library of Congress. Until the establishment of the New York Public Library in 1895, it functioned as the city's library as well. It has been patronized by a wide variety of literary and political figures, from George Washington to Wendy Wasserstein. Its special collections include books from the libraries of John Winthrop and Lorenzo Da Ponte.
WThe Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital are a pair of historic buildings at 135 and 137 Second Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The buildings house the Ottendorfer Branch of the New York Public Library, as well as the women's workspace The Wing in the former hospital structure.
WThe People's Library, also known as Fort Patti or the Occupy Wall Street Library, was a library founded in September 2011 by Occupy Wall Street protesters in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park located in the Financial District of New York City. It was temporarily evicted when Zuccotti Park was cleared on November 15, 2011, during which time 5,554 books were thrown away by the New York City Police Department. In April 2013, the Government of New York City was ordered to pay $366,700 for the raid, which was found to have violated the protesters' First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
WThe Rare Book & Manuscript Library is Columbia University's principal repository for special collections. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia, sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.
WThe Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard between West 135th and 136th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it has, almost from its inception, been an integral part of the Harlem community. It is named for Afro-Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
WThe Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) was a research library within the New York Public Library (NYPL) system in New York City. SIBL was created in 1996 when materials relating to science, business, and related fields were relocated from the Main Building to the former B. Altman and Company Building at Madison Avenue and East 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
WThe Thomas J. Watson Library is the main research library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA), and supports the research activities of the museum staff, as well as outside researchers.
WThe University Club of New York is a private social club located at 1 West 54th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York. It received its charter in 1865, but the origins date back to the autumn of 1861 when a group of college friends, principally Yale alumni, founded the club hoping to extend their collegial ties. The club is not affiliated with any other University Club or college alumni clubs. The club is considered one of the most prestigious in New York City.
WThe William and Anita Newman Library is the main library for the students and faculty of Baruch College, a campus of the City University of New York. It is located within the Information and Technology Building or Newman Library and Technology Center, at 151 East 25th Street in Rose Hill, Manhattan, New York City.
WThe Yorkville Branch of the New York Public Library was built in 1902. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.