Library Lions

Deborah, Jonathan F. P., Samuel Priest, and Adam R. Rose Main Reading Room

The Rose Main Reading Room is a majestic public space, measuring seventy-eight feet by two hundred and ninety-seven feet—roughly the length of two city blocks—and weaving together Old World architectural elegance with modern technology. The award-winning restoration of this room was completed in 1998, thanks to a $15 million gift from Library trustee Sandra Priest Rose and Frederick Phineas Rose, who renamed the room in honor of their children.

Here, patrons can read or study at long oak tables lit by elegant bronze lamps, beneath fifty-two-foot-tall ceilings decorated by dramatic murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds. Since the General Research Division’s opening day in 1911, vast numbers of people have entered the main reading room.

Literary figures such as Norman Mailer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elizabeth Bishop, E. L. Doctorow, and Alfred Kazin have cited the Division as a major resource for their work.