Different Boroughs, Different Library Systems (original) (raw)
New York|Different Boroughs, Different Library Systems
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/nyregion/different-boroughs-different-library-systems.html
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The Sunset Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.Credit...Christian Hansen for The New York Times
- Dec. 7, 2017
Q. Why do Brooklyn and Queens have their own public library systems?
A. Primarily because they were founded before 1898, when the five boroughs consolidated into Greater New York City.
That’s not to say there haven’t been attempts to merge Brooklyn and Queens into the New York Public Library network. But we’ll get to that.
It might surprise you that the public library model we have today, where any community member can check out books for no charge, is a relatively recent concept; the idea spread around the country in the wake of the Civil War. Before then, libraries typically existed either by “subscription” — members only — or mainly for the use of scholars.
The city’s first successful library, the New York Society Library, used the subscription model. Founded in 1754, it is the oldest cultural institution in the city; even today, nonmembers can use the reference room, but they can’t take books home.
When he died in 1886, the former governor Samuel J. Tilden left $2.4 million to establish a “free library and reading room” in New York. In 1895, Tilden’s trust merged with two semiprivate libraries, founded by John Jacob Astor and James Lenox, to form the New York Public Library.
The library’s main branch opened at its present site adjacent to Bryant Park in 1911. (The lions out front, called “Patience” and “Fortitude” by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1930s, were originally known as “Leo Astor” and “Leo Lenox.”)
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