Press Release

The New York Public Library Announces $500 Million Campaign

September 17, 1997, New York City: At a special meeting of the Board of Trustees of The New York Public Library, Chairman Elizabeth Rohatyn and President Paul LeClerc announced the opening of the Library's Second Century Campaign to raise $500 million ­ the largest campaign ever undertaken by a U.S. cultural institution. Mrs. Rohatyn also revealed the identity of the "anonymous donor" of $15 million to the campaign. The gift was made by Library Trustee Sandra Priest Rose and her husband, Frederick P. Rose, in honor of their four children - Deborah, Jonathan F.P., Samuel Priest, and Adam R. Rose - and will be used for the renovation of the Library's Main Reading Room in the landmark Fifth Avenue building, which will reopen in 1999.

Mrs. Rohatyn praised Mr. and Mrs. Rose as enlightened philanthropists who, over the years, have formed partnerships with public funders to rebuild the Library. "It was their gift in memory of Mrs. Rose's mother, Mildred Priest Frank, which joined with city funds to restore the Yorkville Branch in 1987," she said, "and, again last spring, when the renovated Aguilar Branch reopened through our Adopt-A-Branch program, it was Sandra and Fred Rose who were the private adopters." Mrs. Rohatyn also noted that the Roses' latest contribution will continue their special connection with the Main Reading Room that began 10 years ago, when they endowed the position of the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Chief Librarian of the General Research Division.

"It is particularly fitting that we announce this extraordinary gift at the same time that we announce our Second Century Campaign," President LeClerc told the audience of approximately 150 trustees and invited guests. "Since it opened in 1911, the Main Reading Room, one of the Library's ­ and the city's ­ most beautiful and beloved public spaces, has been a symbol of our democratic mission, welcoming, without charge or restriction, millions of visitors seeking information. And the Roses' gift to restore and modernize this room is a symbol of what we hope to accomplish through this campaign: to transform a great 100-year-old library into a great 21st-century library."

Acknowledging President LeClerc's remarks, Mrs. Rose explained that she and her husband would have preferred to remain anonymous until the renovation was complete. "But Paul LeClerc is a very persuasive man," she said, "and he convinced us that, by linking the announcement of our gift to the launching of the Second Century Campaign, we could help dramatize the campaign's goals. My husband and I are making this gift in honor of our children," Mrs. Rose continued, "and we are very proud that they share our deep commitment to the Library. Our entire family feels privileged to play a part in helping ensure its role as a vital educational and cultural institution for future generations."

CAMPAIGN THEMES: COLLECTIONS, ACCESS, ENDOWMENT

Under the broad themes of collections, access, and endowment, the objectives of the Second Century Campaign are to build and preserve the collections; to increase access to collections and services through introducing new information technologies, renovating library buildings, and expanding public programs; and to secure the Library's financial base by increasing its endowment. In order to fulfill these objectives, the campaign is seeking funds to finance an array of projects, of which a selection follows.

Putting 800-Volume Printed Catalog Online
CATNYP, the public online catalog of the Research Libraries, holds the records of books and materials acquired after 1971. To find the records of books acquired before then, readers must look them up in the 800-volume printed Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries: 1911-1971. A massive five-year project, launched with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a gift from Robert W. Wilson, will computerize the 2.3 million entries in the Dictionary Catalog and integrate them into CATNYP. The information will then be available online to users in any library in the NYPL system and to users anywhere in this country and around the world with access to CATNYP via the Internet.

Creating a Center for the Humanities
Combining restoration and renovation, a project by architects Davis Brody Bond, LLP. will transform the Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street into the new Center for the Humanities. The project will retain the original Carrère and Hastings design of the landmark building, while introducing modern improvements, such as new technologies to provide faster and more efficient access to the collections, and a mechanized book-delivery system to streamline the process of filling readers' requests for materials from the stacks. Along with the Rose Main Reading Room, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers ­ which will bring 12 to 15 resident fellows each year to pursue their research and to organize public programs ­ is a centerpiece of the renovation, and will help to establish this Library's identity as a major site for humanities research and discourse.

Improving Public Access to the Library for the Performing Arts
To accommodate its growing collections, services, and public programs, all of which bring thousands of visitors each year, the Library for the Performing Arts must open up its increasingly cramped public spaces. Launched by a gift of nucleus funds from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman, the renovation project by the architectural firm of James Stewart Polshek & Partners will relocate and enlarge reading rooms, create new exhibition galleries, and reconfigure traffic patterns throughout the three-story building. It will also create a new entry and lobby to give the Library a more visible presence on Lincoln Center Plaza and to announce its identity as a vibrant center for the performing arts community.

Rehabilitating Neighborhood Libraries
Many of the 85 neighborhood libraries, including the original "Carnegie branches," were built in the first decade of the century and show the effects of 90 years of heavy use. Through a partnership of private donors and city funders, six branches have been renovated and reopened over the last 10 years, four of them through the Library's Adopt-A-Branch program established in 1994. Five more branches have been adopted ­ Morrisania, which reopens later this year, and George Bruce, Inwood, Stapleton, and Mott Haven, which are slated for renovation. The campaign aims to extend Adopt-A-Branch to other neighborhoods in the city, and has identified four libraries in urgent need of rehabilitation: Chatham Square, Muhlenberg, Ottendorfer, and Seward Park.

Increasing Endowment
Endowment, which produces income, helps to protect the Library against economic fluctuations, provides a dependable source of revenue to support the Research Libraries' day-to-day operations and activities, and gives the Library the flexibility to direct funds to areas of greatest need. Of the $500 million campaign goal, the campaign is committed to raising $120 million in endowment, to be used for the following purposes:

• To support the fundamental work of the Research Libraries, such as acquisition and preservation
• To establish endowments that will secure the quality of the collections in the face of rising costs of books and serials
• To provide staff scholarships to encourage professional development and training
• To expand the Library's educational role through exhibitions, lectures, and other public programs related to the collections

NEW LIBRARY LEADERSHIP

Today's board meeting was the last to be chaired by Elizabeth Rohatyn, who returned the gavel to Marshall Rose, her predecessor and, now, successor. Mrs. Rohatyn is moving to Paris to join her husband, Felix Rohatyn, the recently appointed American Ambassador to France. She will remain a trustee of the Library, and Mr. Rose will resume the chairmanship he held from 1990 to 1995. Trustee Samuel Butler will succeed Mr. Rose as Chairman of the Executive Committee.

And ten new trustees were elected to the board: Adam Bartos, Gonzalo de las Heras, Henry A. McKinnell, Abby Milstein, Jack Nash, Jessye Norman, Carl H. Pforzheimer III, Robert Liberman, Robert Silvers, and Charles Uribe.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S MISSION

The New York Public Library, a private corporation, serves a more varied set of constituencies than any other library in the world. Its four research centers, with collections of more than 42,000,000 items in over 3,000 languages and dialects, compare in size and significance to the world's greatest research libraries; its branches serve three of the city's five boroughs through 85 circulating libraries, whose collections of more than 11 million items are the largest of any branch system in the country. Responding to the social and educational needs of their surrounding communities, the branches also offer approximately 25,000 free classes and programs to New Yorkers each year. To support a mission of this magnitude, the Library needs an annual operating budget of close to $200 million, and relies on government funding, private gifts, endowment income, and earned income.

For further information, press please contact Nancy Donner or Caroline Oyama, Public Relations Office, (212) 221-7676.

WRITERS ON THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

Amid so many trivial symbols of civic belonging, so many garish slogans of citizenship, the Library is genuine, tangible, inexhaustible­an accessible, available institution that practically begs to be exploited and reveled in. If the Statue of Liberty is the city's gate and welcome sign, the Library is its horizon, its sense of possibility: gain hope (and power and pleasure), all who enter here. David Remnick, The New Yorker, May 22, 1995

"The glory of the Library is not only that it has lasted and endured inclement economic and political times. But that its leadership, its staff, its board, its supporters, its users have for one hundred years refused to give up the essence and the mission of the urban intellectual experience: cared-for public space, genuinely public service, and a refusal to accept less than the best for its constituency." Toni Morrison

"Here at the heart of the greatest city in the world, stands the greatest library in the world. For the last 100 years, The New York Public Library has been at the core of our city's rich intellectual tradition." Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

"The thing thatÕs always impressed me about The New York Public Library is that of all the great cultural institutions of New York ­ and there are a lot of them ­ it's by far the most democratic. You don't have to belong, you don't have to give any money, you just walk in the door." Calvin Trillin

"I depend on the library not just as a place to study and do research, but since I don't have a computer at home, I often need to use the library's computers to do my school work. There are lots of problems in the world today and the only way we can hope to solve them is for people to have free access to information. Contrary to the beliefs of the hereditarians, intelligence is learned. Intelligence is based on knowledge ­ knowledge we acquire from institutions such as libraries." Cordielle Street, student, Asa Philip Randolph High School

"And that's why even in the undeniable grandeur of The New York Public Library I don't feel puny and I don't itch to escape. There is no question about whose grandeur all this is. The message is carved in stone, in the marble piers of Astor Hall: The City of New York Has Erected This Building To Be Maintained Forever As a Free Library For the Use of the People. An extraordinary promise, and one that's been kept. Josephine Humphreys, The New York Times, September 18, 1994

"As I grew up on New York's West Side, I frequented the branch library on Amsterdam Avenue and 83rd Street where, while still in grade school, I would excitedly and perhaps greedily check out more books than I could ever possibly read or for that matter carry. In high school, the Donnell Library on 53rd Street became a source of inspiration and knowledge - and a source, I might add, of more than a few dates. . . . My brother . . . whose appetite for books is forever unsatiated, frequents these [42nd Street Library] halls every week. The library should be all of these to all of us: a quarry of knowledge and intellectual invention, an inexpensive path to adventure and travel, and a place of common ground." Alex Kotlowitz

"The library was one of the few institutions in that very segregated society where a young black girl like me could go inside and find more nurturing for her dreams and more inspiration, where we could escape the world of Jim Crow and travel to the outer boundaries of our imaginations." Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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