For two new poems of mine, on ninny versus deep serene, and proverbs for the wicked, click here and scroll down to pp. 34 and 35.
This is a tale of two libraries, one an old friend and one a
mystery building; I’ll start with the old friend. The year 2016 has seen many architectural
changes in the city of New York. The one
I can most relate to is the reopening, after two years of renovation, of the
Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library, that formidable Beaux Arts
structure on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, guarded by two famous
sculpted lions. Behind that Beaux Arts
façade and the lions, deep inside and up on the third floor, is the famous
reading room where researchers pore over the items they have requested.
In years past I have spent hours in the Rose Reading Room
perusing books, many of them fragile, fetched up from the library’s innards and
delivered to me when my magic number flashed on the screen above the window
where you claim the books requested, or where you find, alas, that the items
you most want and need are not available.
Sometimes I claimed one thin volume, and sometimes a whole stack of
books that I with effort toted back to my seat at one of the room’s long
tables. All round me were other
researchers likewise immersed in their work, plus an occasional intruder from
the streets who propped some book or newspaper up in front of him (always a
him) and pretended to read, while dozing off from time to time, until a library
guard nudged him awake and reminded him that sleeping here in the Rose Room is
totally and absolutely forbidden.
My last project there was reading books – preferably primary
sources – about the slave trade in New York, as background material for my
unpublished historical novel Dark
Knowledge. So engrossed was I in my
research that I failed to look around and above me to appreciate just how
magnificent my surroundings were: a room the length of two city blocks, with a
52-foot-high ceiling displaying murals showing fluffy clouds in a wide-arching
sky. The building itself dates back to
1902, when the cornerstone was laid; the roof was completed in 1906, but the
library didn’t open until 1911, when on the first day between 30,000 and 50,000
visitors poured in.
Given the building’s age, it’s not surprising that time took
its toll. One night in May 2014 an
ornamental plaster rosette crashed to the floor of the reading room, causing the
library to conduct a full inspection of the ceilings of both the Rose Reading
Room and the adjoining catalog room where scholars submit their request and
receive the magic number that will let them claim their materials in the
reading room. Restored in the 1990s, the
1911 reading-room ceiling proved to be in good condition, but the library
decided to do more than recreate and replace the fallen rosette. Installing scaffolding and lengthy platforms,
it reinforced all 900 plaster elements in both rooms with steel cables,
restored the catalog room’s mural, and installed LED lights in the reading
room’s chandeliers. The project cost $12
million and meant the rooms were closed for two years, to the dismay of
researchers and the general public, who were serviced in other less grandiose rooms throughout the building.
Today the rejuvenated rooms once again welcome researchers,
who need have no fear that a falling plaster rosette will crash upon their
noggin, disrupting vital research.
Besides fetching books from the stacks, the two rooms hold about 52,000
reference books, including encyclopedias and dictionaries in various
languages. For one complicated project I
once consulted encyclopedias in Spanish, French, and German, as well as a
Russian one in translation – a reminder of what outlandish assignments may come
to a freelance editor.
One last detail: why is it called the Rose Reading
Room? Because it is named for the four
children of the Rose family that donated the money to restore the room in the
1990s.
And now for the mystery building. There are in fact two mystery buildings side
by side on West 13th Street that I pass frequently, but which until
now I have never really looked at closely.
One, a three-story windowless slab near Greenwich Avenue, looms
strangely, obviously not commercial or residential. What, then, is it? A Metropolitan Transportation Authority
substation, one of many situated throughout the city, but this particular one
hailed by that august authority, the New
York Times, as an example of a civic-minded expression of architectural
ambition. Built in the early 1930s, it
is described as an Art Deco gem and a neighborhood landmark, prized for its
geometric decorations, embossed aluminum doors, limestone frieze, Flemish brick
coursing (whatever that is), and square turrets. Yes, close inspection even of a photo reveals
all those things, if only the city’s hurrying pedestrians (myself included) would
stop to take them in.
But what is an MTA substation? It is a facility, underground or above, that
converts high voltage AC current into the DC current used by the subways of New
York City. If that doesn’t clear things
up for those who never took a high-school physics course – or even for those
who did – I can only add that photos of substation interiors show rows of big
boxlike gray structures with gauges and dials that, minus the gauges and dials,
remind me of high school lockers where students deposited their wraps, lunches,
and other vital items. There are also
panels and cranes and fans and ventilation ducts, and cables and tanks and
wires, the exact purpose of which escapes me.
But some substations have been landmarked, and the New York Transit
Museum offers tours of substations to those who are eager to learn more about
how this city works, even though the public usually exits the tours more
confused than ever. So let’s just say
that substations provide the power that makes the trains run. And if their usually unlovely exteriors are
sometimes enlivened with a bit of Art Deco ornamentation, so much the better.
But right next to the West 13th Street substation
is another building, 251 West 13th
Street, that is as impressive and intriguing as the substation is prosaic and
plain: a three-story red-brick affair with rounded arches over tall windows
that reminds me a little of the Jefferson Market Library on Sixth Avenue. The 13th Street building was once
a branch library that I visited when I lived nearby on Jane Street, but it is
now in private hands, handsomely ornate, not a bit Art Deco, its recessed ground
floor and basement visible from the street through iron bars, the ground
floor’s big windows revealing what seems to be an office. A notice at the entrance announces, “BE AWARE
/ This entrance is being videotaped,” which for me makes it only more
mysterious. Also posted there: “Suite
1 Private / Suite 2 Levinson/Fontana.” All this made me curious about the building’s
history, and sure enough, like so many old buildings in the city, it has
history aplenty.
The building at 251 West 13th Street was a branch
library right from the start: the Jackson Square Library, built in 1887, as
announced by wrought-iron numbers on the red-brick façade, a gift to the city’s
newly created Free Circulating Library by George W. Vanderbilt who, unlike many
of that moneyed clan, was a bookworm eager to make books available to the
public. But my linking it to the
Jefferson Market Library was for the most part mistaken, for that library is
Victorian Gothic, whereas this one resembles a Flemish guildhall, reminding me
of the handsome guildhall façades lining the Grande Place in Brussels,
Belgium.
This branch in time played a role in the history of
libraries, for in 1899 its head librarian initiated an open-shelf system,
giving the public free access to the books, and relieving the librarians of the
wearying task of fetching the requested books from distant closed shelves, an
innovation that then spread throughout the branches and persists to this
day. Yes, a few books were stolen, but librarians
still preferred the open system and considered the losses negligible. Another problem was contagious diseases, no
small matter since a janitor and his son who lived in the building came down
with scarlet fever in 1908, causing the library to be shut down for fumigation,
the patrons having to trudge some distance to another branch. In more recent times the library was used by
writers, artists, and other professionals, among them James Baldwin, Ring
Lardner, W.H. Auden, Gregory Corso, and my humble self.
In 1961 plans were made to save the Jefferson Market
Courthouse on Sixth Avenue and convert it into a branch library serving
Greenwich Village – the branch library that I often visit and get books
from. As a result of this conversion,
the smaller Jackson Square Library was closed and sat empty until 1967, when
the performance artist Robert Delford Brown bought it. An
extensive restoration followed, bringing light to the dark interior and
hacking away the front doors and much of the ground floor, so that the building
now seems to cantilever precariously above the sidewalk. Here Brown staged frequent happenings and
installed his First National Church of the Exquisite Panic, a tongue-in-cheek
enterprise with two supreme commandments: Live, and Do Not Eat Cars. Since the state of nirvana was too difficult
to achieve, Brown instructed his faithful how to reach the state of Nevada.
But that was not the end of the building’s
transformations. In the 1980s the
television writer Tom Fontana discovered the building and was struck by it,
noting its distinctive appearance and deteriorated condition. Then, in 1996, learning that it was for sale,
he bought it and initiated a restoration that obliterated much of the previous
renovation, installed a spacious and airy bachelor’s pad (he is divorced, lives
alone) on the two upper floors, and installed his office on the main floor, and
other facilities in the basement. His
residence is presumably the Suite 1 indicated at the entrance, and
Levinson/Fontana in Suite 2 is the TV production company he has founded with
director Barry Levinson. The second floor, once the library’s main reading
room, now houses Mr. Fontana’s library, its 6,600 volumes lodged in
floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases. And
on the roof, hidden behind the gable at the front of the building, is a
sun-splashed deck complete with a suburban-size grill. The façade was not restored, however, because
of the expense involved, so the building may still seem to cantilever above the
sidewalk.
Having no television, I know little about Mr. Fontana, who
is said to party a lot; one of his New Year’s Eve festivities drew 400 guests
and lasted till dawn. Though I’m not
that party-prone, I still warm to him because he peppers his speech with
profanities (as I, alas, sometimes do), has never owned a car, and doesn’t use
a computer, preferring to write his scripts in longhand. His eschewing the computer balances out my
eschewing television. (Veteran followers
of this blog know that I love this verb, which sounds like a sneeze – a perfect
note to end on.)
* * * * * *
Browder poems: For my short poem “I Crackle” and a stunning photo of me, go here. For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down. To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here. For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: The
changing skyline of the city: what’s to hate and what’s to love.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
