Surrounded by skyscrapers, Bryant Park is a public park located in Midtown Manhattan.Although technically the Main Branch of the New York Public Library is located within the park, effectively it forms the park’s functional eastern boundary, making Sixth Avenue the park’s primary entrance. Bryant Park is located entirely over an underground structure that houses the library’s stacks, which were built in the 1980s when the park was closed to the public and excavated; the new library facilities were built below ground level while the park was restored above it.
Bryant Park is one of the signature examples of New York City’s revival in the 1990s. With a low crime rate, the park is filled with office workers on sunny weekdays, city visitors on the weekends, and revelers during the holidays.
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, more widely known as the Main Branch, is the flagship building in the New York Public Library system and a prominent historic landmark in Midtown Manhattan. The branch, opened in 1911, is one of four research libraries in the library system.
The consolidation of several libraries into the New York Public Library in 1901, along with the large Tilden bequest and the Carnegie donation, allowed for the creation of an enormous library system befitting the nation’s largest city, but the founders also wanted an imposing main branch.
Following a competition among the city’s most famous architects, the relatively unknown firm of Carrère and Hastings was selected to design and construct the new library. The result, regarded as the apex of Beaux-Arts design, was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. On May 23, 1911, the main branch of the New York Public Library was officially opened.
The Library’s famous Rose Main Reading Room is currently closed for renovation as of July 2016.
The building has frequently appeared or been referenced in artistic, literary, and cultural works.
It was featured in the 1978 film The Wiz when Dorothy and Toto stumble across it, one of its lions comes to life, and joins them on their journey out of Oz. It was a major location in the 2004 apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow. It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters, when a librarian in the basement reports seeing a ghost which becomes violent when approached. Additionally, the building is featured as a wedding venue in the 2008 film Sex and the City. It was also prominently featured in the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau.
Other films in which the library appears include 42nd Street (1933), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Chapter Two (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Regarding Henry (1991), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), and The Time Machine (2002).
In television, the library was featured in the “The Library” episode of Seinfeld, in which Cosmo Kramer dates a librarian there, Jerry Seinfeld is accosted by a library cop named Mr. Bookman for late fees, and George Costanza encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its stairs. It is the setting for much of “The Persistence of Memory,” the eleventh part of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos TV series.