Memories of 114 Years of Hudson Park Library

This year the New York Public Library Celebrates 125 Years of service. It is a moment to celebrate and reaffirm the enduring power of libraries. Our values of trust, respect, and free and open access to knowledge and opportunity are as essential today as ever before.

It is hard not to have a library. Not only is a library a place for books, but each branch of the New York Public Library is an anchor for a neighborhood.  Some, like the Hudson Park Library on Leroy Street in Manhattan, have played that role for over a century, creating community and memories. This became very clear recently when—without a branch to go to at the moment—we posted a brief query on the Greenwich Village Grapevine Facebook page, asking whether its members had recollections of the branch. Over two dozen people replied with stories from eight decades. Here are some highlights.

Special thanks to Grapevine administrator Ellen Williams.

David Van Biema is a journalist and photographer whose show All the Day’s Bounty: Photos from the Village and Elsewhere appeared in the Hudson Park Library in 2019. We are grateful to David for initiating the community dialogue and collecting all the stories during the temporary closure of the library.

If you have memories of the Hudson Park Library, feel free to leave your comments below or reach out to us.

Sylvia Syracuse

"My mother, Violet Squires, frequented the library almost daily growing up around the corner on Morton Street. This would be throughout the 1930s. She said she would go to the library after school at PS 3, take out two books, go home, and come back later to return them and get more. That's climbing up and down six floors, two flights per floor. She said that at the time, on the second floor in the children's room, there were fancy dolls of some kind in glass cases around the perimeter of the room. She swears they weren't puppets. Years later she asked a librarian about those dolls but the librarian didn't know what had happened to them."

Bernice Durante Minoia

"The nuns from Our Lady of Pompeii would take us there from time to time since it was so nearby. I remember the librarian reading My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and after that, I was completely hooked on reading. I’d go there after school to do my homework with friends, or spend time there on a rainy day."

Joseph Mauriello

"Mostly we’d go on weekdays, early evenings. I don’t remember the library ever being crowded or busy. I always frequented the adult section. This was back in the late '50s. My usual choices were unusual: ghosts, UFOs, ESP, as well as science, astronomy, and of course science fiction. I had absolutely no interest in sports, but great interest in archeology, Werner Von Braun & V2 rockets. The library was a pleasant diversion for this shy, introverted (at the time) chubby kid, with a very devoted mother who recognized my interests and encouraged them."

Elizabeth DeFrino

"Spent many summer days there! I guess mostly in the '70s. Always looking for a new book by a favorite author, going with a friend, and sneaking in cookies."

Joe Gilford

"At Little Red [Little Red School House] this is where we were taught how to use a public library from about 2nd grade on. Also when I was old enough—7—I got my very own library card. It was like getting citizenship or something. I've rarely been that excited about something until I got my driver's license. We also use to end up there a lot because we were using the pool (at the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center) after school sometimes. Later, while I was still living on Bank Street in 1992-1993, my baby son Jacob and I used to come there and use the upstairs baby playroom on winter afternoons. It is an absolutely indispensable public institution."

Rosanna Polsinelli Cafaro

"I went to the library often when the childrens room was upstairs. I still remember the thrill of applying for my very first library card in 1964. I climbed up on the stool so I could reach the desk where I took an oath to take good care of the books I would be borrowing. I would take out the maximum number of books allowed. At first, I was in the Easy Reader section where the bookcases were lower. As I got older, I moved on to fiction, the taller bookshelves. I can still remember the room, the shelves, and the smell of the library. My favorite books were series of stories like the Betsy and Fripsey family books. I must have been about 8 then. My tastes widened as I explored the rest of the shelves."

Sandra Molé

"My mother took me often as a young child duringthe 1950s. Later on, as a student at SJA [St. Joseph Academy], we would have class trips there even though we had a school library. A particularly favorite series was the one about Rowena Carey, an adventurous girl growing up in Gloucester, MA. I’ve always associated those books with the Hudson Park branch."

Louis Baldaccini

"I would go there often. I discovered medieval armor in one of their books".

Gail Ann Fanelli

"I would stop in after swimming in the pool."

Joan K. White

"We loved that place. It was a home away from home."

James McMenamin

"We had a monthly writing group downstairs in the basement. The years were between 2004-2017, I believe. The group grew out of the monthly Nomads Choir poetry reading which was held at St. Veronica's Church. I am someone who is always early. Sometimes I’d wait in Jimmy Walker Park. We had a wonderful run there. I loved the building, the staircases, the ceilings, the aura upon entering, the scent of wood, the feeling of all the past souls studying and contemplating attached to the residue in the air."

Jenny Dana

"My friends and family never called it Hudson Park, it was always Leroy St. Libraryor the 7th Ave. I went regularly starting in the late 1960s. I believe it was my school librarian who first mentioned it was possible for students to work for NYPL after school as a page. I wanted this job more than anything and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to apply. The responsibilities were to re-shelve returned books back to their correct place on the shelves. After that, we were supposed to scan the shelves looking for books that were out of place. I enjoyed this the most; it was like a treasure hunt and you got to see all the different types of books. The most challenging responsibility was to screen the films for younger kids. These were the old-style film projectors that we had to set up and run in the downstairs room. If something happened with the film, which happened frequently, the kids would go crazy until we fixed it."

Mary Quinlan

"That's my library. It's one of NYPL's few remaining original Carnegie branches. God, I just love this branch. There is something so very comforting about it."

Virginia Lombardi

"This may not be the type of story you’re looking for, but here’s my memory. They had a copier and I had a steady hand. That made us a perfect pair to create fake birth certificates. None of us had cars so no need for driver licenses. We used our doctored birth certificates to get into clubs & bars. My bad".

Crispin Dennis

We used to go there a lot with PS 3. Sometimes recess in the playground… also saw the 1920s original King Kong there with school. Some very good memories there."