Blog Posts by Subject: Building and Construction

Most New Yorkers, when asked to name NYC landmarks, will conjure up the familiar array of iconographic symbols that make up our city: the Statue Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Ground Zero Memorial, etc. — but having grown up in Washington Heights, I can’t help but place the George Washington Bridge among the great monuments of Gotham pride. Ever since its completion in 1931, this stunning suspension bridge has remained a sight that never gets old, one which seems so in harmony with its surroundings, and whose effortless beauty belies a remarkable feat of engineering.

On Sunday, December 5, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building was the site of the 2010 Holiday Open House, the Library's annual thank-you celebration for donors at the Friends level ($40) or above. Besides enjoying building-wide party fun, attendees were offered a rare opportunity to glimpse a part of the Library that is normally hidden from public view: the building's central stacks that lie beneath the Rose Main Reading Room. As a "tour guide" on one of the 18 enormously popular stack tours, I thought it would be fun to share my "patter" with a wider audience.

Folk singer Pete Seeger looked up 'log cabin' at The New York Public Library when he wanted to build a home in upstate New York, according to a recent New Yorker interview (Wilkinson, Alec. "The Protest Singer." New Yorker v.82, no. 9 (April 17, 2006): p44). Curious, I repeated his query in the library catalog starting with a simple search for "log cabin*" (the asterisk wildcard finds both singular and plural). Now I've posted a guide to these resources, attached below and downloadable from the library's website. I wonder if Seeger learned his cabin craft from How to Build Your Home in the Woods (1952). More recent, The Science Industry and