[HN Gopher] The New York Public Library's Last, Secret Apartment...
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The New York Public Library's Last, Secret Apartments (2016)
Author : jason_slack
Score : 180 points
Date : 2020-11-24 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| delgaudm wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701847
| baybal2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thank 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-m...
| larrik wrote:
| The subways have even more of the "auto shop" effect!
| cyberlurker wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-
| da...
| lqet wrote:
| Here is a picture of how it looked before the cleaning:
|
| https://untappedcities.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/06/Grand-...
| jccalhoun wrote:
| the bottom of the page has a link to a video of one of the
| apartments: 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.
| rch wrote:
| 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).
| JackFr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| kingbirdy wrote:
| All three New York library systems are independently run,
| they're not controlled by the city or state of New York.
| embarcadero wrote:
| While technically a private institution, NYPL is chartered
| by New York State, many of its buildings are publicly
| owned, and the mayor, council speaker, and comptroller each
| appoint a representative to the board.
| tingletech wrote:
| each borough is its own county with its own courts,
| commissioners, sheriff, etc. as far as I understood.
|
| NYPL is a bit of an historical anomaly as far as how it is
| organized.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, the Queens Public Library is in
| fact the largest circulating public library in the country.
| embarcadero wrote:
| "one of". It's unlikely to be bigger than NYPL, which has
| 92 locations to QPL's 62.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's possibly bigger on number of patrons/items-lent-per-
| year. Queens has half a million more people than
| Manhattan.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I know the Flushing branch is extremely busy, to the
| point where it's hard to find a place to sit inside it
| that isn't just the floor.
|
| My impression of the library systems is that Queens in
| particular does a lot of community events that aren't
| library related in the library.
| [deleted]
| derefr wrote:
| 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.)
| mgr86 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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. :)
| feralimal wrote:
| This building doesn't even look like it was originally a library.
| It looks like it was repurposed to be a library.
| motohagiography wrote:
| 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.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > it's criticized as a "sweetheart deal"
|
| Sure, maybe they can assign these properties to "eligible"
| people at random. Someday you'll be on the losing end of a
| lottery limited to "eligible" people. The draft to Vietnam.
| Getting Parkinsons. Being born across the street, from the
| better zipcode.
|
| Just because in some abstract mathematical sense they're fair,
| doesn't mean lotteries are equitable or just in the way people
| care about.
|
| Besides, the idea that it's wasted or neglected, it's crap. The
| government has basically unlimited resources. How much money
| did we borrow, how many checks did we cut in the last 7 months,
| and what were the implications really? It is never about making
| the most of a scarce resource, there is never really scarcity.
| And maybe it's not justice either.
|
| Nobody has a right to charge a person rent who would have
| gotten a free, beautiful government apartment instead. However,
| because that landlord wants Birkin bags, and the government
| will simply never, under any circumstances, give out free
| Birkin bags on purpose, the landlord is going to be rationally,
| legitimately mad about free apartments. That's the antagonist,
| not the government.
|
| And the reason we have a less interesting world than the
| humanistic one you propose is, landlords care more about
| fucking Birkin bags than say, art and writing.
| pembrook wrote:
| Birkin bags and other impractical luxury goods are simply a
| signaling device.
|
| Humans care about what other humans think. This is often
| good, as the negative formal and informal sanctions of peers
| is what keeps the human animals from murdering each other.
|
| Birkin bags and luxury goods are a mostly harmless byproduct
| of this human desire for approval.
|
| In writing this comment, you are signaling to your HN peers
| how Nobel and virtuous you are, in that you only care about
| things like art and writing---hoping for internet points in
| return (just as we all are).
|
| The problem is, the government does not have unlimited
| resources, and most of us lack the intrinsic motivation to do
| anything useful for others.
|
| If given everything for free, we'd like to think we'd spend
| our time creating great art and inventions---but really we'd
| probably spend 99% of our time on Netflix and social
| signaling.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the (federal) government has unlimited money, in the sense
| that it has the ability to print more when politically
| expedient. this is quite different from having unlimited
| resources.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I totally get your point and don't mean to detract from it in
| any way - but my wife would definitely argue that Birkin bags
| qualify as "art" :)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Except that your "lease" can continue to your spouse or
| children:
|
| > Those rules, laid out in a provincial statute that's been in
| place for the past 25 years, state that specific houses on the
| island can only be transferred to a spouse or child.
|
| https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/man-fighting-toronto-...
| rtkwe wrote:
| Part of the reason they're not occupied though is they were
| setup for library caretakers and have full after hours access
| to the library so it's kind of sketchy to just rent them out on
| the open market because without a lot of work the tenant would
| have to have the keys and security codes for the library.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm surprised "the city that never sleeps" lets their
| libraries close at night. (not serious)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Large swathes of the city are dead by 9PM.
| altrunox wrote:
| IDK, considering the insane rent prices in NYC I would think
| that they could do something like a small division so that
| the person could access the apartment without direct access
| to the rest of the library.
|
| It could help to support the libraries, I guess some people
| would even pay an "extra" because it's in there.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The 'small division' would have to cut the stairs off from
| the rest of the library because the apartment in this
| building is on the third floor. It doesn't really work with
| the entrance, main desk and stair location where you could
| easily seal off the apartment from the rest of the
| building.
|
| https://bit.ly/3fyZDJ5
| saalweachter wrote:
| I would definitely pay extra to have access to the library
| as a tenant in the library-apartment. I mean, granted, it's
| just a generic neighborhood library, so it wouldn't have
| specialized texts, but still.
|
| Leave the cameras on, lock the librarian's office and
| password-protect the computers after hours, and require the
| tenants to return [or check out] any borrowed material by
| the next morning. Realistically, you'll probably have one
| or two bad tenants over the next few decades who leave
| their trash inside the library or try to steal the crappy
| old library computers and it will mostly be fine.
| iguy wrote:
| If they accepted slightly below market rent, they could
| have the pick of NYU's writing instructors, or sabbatical
| visitors, or whatever. That is, don't rent them on the
| open market, but hook up with one of the many institutes
| with a long list of underpaid people well-vetted for
| reverence of books.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yep - set up a scholar/artist/author-in-residence
| program.
| userbinator wrote:
| _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 wrote:
| 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.
| mr_overalls wrote:
| > 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. . .
|
| I found this description very evocative, to the point that I
| was starting to imagine a story set in a building of these
| characters. I was very pleased to click on your profile and see
| that you're a writer, and are not letting that talent go to
| waste!
| bsanr2 wrote:
| My 9-year-old self just whispered, "The Westing Game," into
| my ear.
| embarcadero wrote:
| 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-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.
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