Landmark Library Opens New "South Court" in June

Unusual Six-Story Glass Structure Includes Visitors' Theater, Classrooms, and Auditorium

South Court, view from Astor Hall entrance. Photo © Peter Aaron/Esto, 2002.

New York, April 26, 2002 -- In June 2002, The New York Public Library's new South Court building will be unveiled by Board Chairman Samuel C. Butler and Library President Paul LeClerc. The six-story glass structure rises within the southern courtyard of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, the Library's flagship building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. South Court is the first above-ground structure to be added to the landmark building since it opened in 1911.

The opening of South Court will recast the public's perception of the building -- long thought of as the system's central library -- as a state-of-the-art research center for the humanities and social sciences. South Court offers training to the public in research techniques and methodologies, and in using electronic and traditional resources. It has a public Visitors' Theater, and an auditorium with multimedia and webcasting capabilities. It also provides increased space for staff offices and a ground-floor loading dock and small parking area.

The $29 million project was made possible through a $17.5 million capital construction grant from the City of New York committed by Mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Rudolph W. Giuliani and City Council Speakers A. Gifford Miller and Peter F. Vallone, and through bond financing. Celeste Bartos, for whom South Court's Education Center is named, generously provided a major leadership gift to endow educational programs and services in South Court.  Additional support of $1.5 million was provided by The Starr Foundation for programs and operations of the South Court facility, and $1 million by the Altman Foundation for public classes and training in humanities and social science research and resources.

South Court, stairs on lower level. Photo © Peter Aaron/Esto, 2002.

"South Court was born out of the Library's ongoing need for more space and updated facilities, which has been the impetus for other remarkable projects such as the Science, Industry and Business Library, the renovation of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the Library for the Performing Arts, upgrades to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as the innovative expansion of Library stacks beneath Bryant Park," says Mr. Butler.  "However, the growing demands on the Humanities and Social Sciences Library building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue presented a particular challenge. Like other cultural institutions all over the world, we began by asking ourselves whether it would be wiser to impose modern solutions on a century-old design, or to build a separate structure."

With the South Court building, the Library will do both. The contemporary, freestanding glass building within the interior southern courtyard of the marble Humanities and Social Sciences Library forges an alliance between old and new. "South Court represents the last possible expansion of one of New York City's most important public facilities, allowing the Library to employ a space that has always been underused," says Library President Paul LeClerc.  "The in-fill building reveals the unusual beauty of the original Beaux Arts library, but is impressive in its own right.  Together the buildings offer the user resources, guidance, and unsurpassed access to the Library's vast holdings in the fields of history, literature, and art."

South Court's Design
The design of the new building is by Davis Brody Bond LLP, the award-winning architectural firm responsible for the majority of the elegant renovations to the Humanities and Social Sciences Library over the past 20 years. The six-story glass structure with cantilevered floors is held four feet back from the existing walls of the Library -- a juxtaposition that will allow visitors to see the south courtyard's original Vermont marble facade for the first time in many decades.  In effect, South Court "borrows" its interior walls from that facade and its ornamentation from the building's classical architectural detailing. Honoring the original building, South Court is not visible from the street or from the Library's most important interior spaces.

"There was both the technical and ideological challenge of designing a building within a building," says architect Lewis Davis.  "Our goal was to create a structure that celebrates the existing building but that maintains its own integrity. South Court is contemporary, light, almost transparent.  In fact, visitors can walk up to and examine the exterior facade of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library while standing in South Court, or even peer directly into the stacks, in some areas."

Building Layout
The former courtyard, which this new building now fills, measures 80'x80'. South Court offers 40,000 square feet of new space overall.  From bottom to top, the six stories are as follows:
•    Concourse Level:  South Court Auditorium
•    Ground Floor:  Loading dock and small parking area
•    First Floor: Visitors' Theater and classrooms
•    Second Floor and Mezzanine Level:  Library offices and work areas
•    Third Floor: Library offices and staff lounge

On the first floor of South Court, the main public entryway proceeds from Astor Hall -- the Library's grand Fifth Avenue entrance -- into a soaring skylighted atrium, open to the upper floors of the new building.  Visitors will be greeted by a media wall featuring a multiscreen presentation of digitized collection materials, from illuminated manuscripts to 18th-century maps to Wonder Woman comics.  The presentation was designed by Spagnola and Associates.

The Celeste Bartos Education Center
The heart of South Court will be The Celeste Bartos Education Center, named for the lead benefactor of the project, which permits the Library for the first time to offer a new orientation program to both researchers and tourists. 

The handicap-accessible Celeste Bartos Education Center includes the first-floor Visitors' Center, with 24 seats, offering screenings of a 12-minute film that guides viewers through the history of libraries, focusing on The New York Public Library. The film was produced by Working Dog Productions.

One of the classrooms in which the public can receive free instruction.

It also includes two 15-seat classrooms equipped with up-to-date computer workstations for hands-on instruction, oversized screens for demonstrations, and sophisticated audio-visual systems. "The mission is to assist users in negotiating the complex information environment, beginning with our own rich collections and resources," says William D. Walker, the Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries.  "Participants will learn how information is organized, how to access the particular resources they need, and how to put that knowledge to use in meeting research goals."

Also part of The Celeste Bartos Education Center is a 178-seat auditorium that has been created for programs, lectures, and conferences, including multimedia and webcast presentations, located on the concourse level beneath the ground floor, literally underground. "The technical capabilities of the auditorium will ultimately enable us to broaden our audience base to users all over the world, who will be able to view our programs and lectures over the Internet," says Rodney Phillips, Director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

Since the early 1980s, renovations to the flagship building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street have restored extraordinary public spaces at the Library.  They include the Bartos Forum; the Gottesman, Salomon, and Wachenheim exhibition rooms; the McGraw Rotunda; and the Rose Main Reading Room.  But many of the Library's vital support functions, which occupied some of those areas, needed a new home.  South Court's second and mezzanine floors will be occupied by Technical Services Division staff responsible for the critical work of acquiring and processing new materials for the Library.  Each year, the Cataloging Department enters a staggering 120,000 titles into CATNYP, the online catalog of The Research Libraries, available through the Internet.  These works include not only books and periodicals, but also musical scores, sound recordings, videotapes, and sheet maps.  New acquisitions can now be processed at a more rapid pace. Those items will be moved in and out of the building through a loading dock on the ground level.

The glass-enclosed top floor -- the third floor of South Court -- contains a lounge for staff and volunteers, as well as additional staff offices for the General Research Division.  The ground floor contains the loading dock for deliveries, and a small parking area.

History of the Southern Courtyard
The original design of the flagship library building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street was conceived by John Shaw Billings, the Library's first Director, and incorporated many of the technological advances of the time.  Those plans were realized by architects Carrère and Hastings on the former site of the Croton Distributing Reservoir.  The design called for twin courtyards on the north and south ends of the building.  In the early years, the skylighted, enclosed north courtyard, now the Celeste Bartos Forum, served as the lending delivery room of the circulating collections.  The southern courtyard was to remain open, serving as the Library's service court and delivery entrance.

In the early years, the south courtyard was the site of receptions, readings, and performances.  A modest one-story bungalow, constructed as a staff lunchroom in 1919, later housed exhibition staff.  In 1950, the courtyard's central fountain was removed, the result of a citywide water shortage and a break in the supply line. A nostalgic announcement of the event in a staff publication described the area as the "center of social activities."  Before the construction of the South Court building began two years ago, the area had been turned over to parking and deliveries.

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