The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-21
GREAT NEW YORK LIBRARY FINISHED Is One of Most Beautiful Buildings in World IT HAS COST s1o,OOO,oOO Great Structure Is Blend of Italian and French Renaissance-It
 Has Been Built for
 Eternity


 New York, May 2O.-The New York Public Library the largest, the most costly, and one of the. most beautiful buildings designed for its specific uses in the world, will be dedicated to the instruction and the convenience of the public on Wednesday of this week by President Taft, Governor Dix, Mayor Gaynor and distinguished representa- ton of the culture of the entire nation. It holds shelf room for 9,500,O00 volumes; it has floor space of 375,00O feet, as against 326,o GOO feet in the Congressional library at Washington. and 1t has cost for erection more than s10,000,000, a figure which, when all details have been at tended to, may rise to S12,000000. The land on which it stands--fronting two blocks on Fifth avenue. between Fortieth and Forty-second street, was Hast valued at $20 00o000.
 The New York Public Library opens with a total endowment of $3,446,500 and 373, GOO books on the shelves. Within the next 25 years ten times as many are expected-S7o 100000 The catalog room now has 100000 cards and can rise to 10000,- 00O without feeling cramped.
 Nine years ago next November the cor nerstone was laid by Mayor Seth Low Since then criticism has been abundant, not always well informed and often con flicting. In great measure the public has been hampered in any true appreciation of the building as a whole by the frag- mentary and ragged state of its ap- proaehes. Said John W. Alexander, the painter: ',The public library reminds me of a beautiful woman who hasn't kept her finger nails clean" All that has now been done away with The approaches have been cleared and the building stands free to the public gaze as the architects planned
 The dimensions of the building are inn posing in themselves, but much as has been written about it there is singularly little authoritative critical comment on it's architectural merits or defects. In exterior dignity, general opinion holds it nobly adequate. For interior spacious ness and unity it is felt, perhaps, to fall below the Boston Public Library as a pure monument of beauty, but to exceed any other building of it's nature in the world for combined beauty and utility In general the style is a blend of the Italian and French Renaissance and Gustave kobbe has characterized this blend as thoroughly harmonized and made con gruous, not merely conglomerate. The re- suit is artistic and dgnified
 The main entrance opens from Fifth avenue upon the rotunda, room which, though impressive in it's purity of out line and dignified simplicity, disappoints some critics as lacking in spaciousness for the introductory to structure of such huge proportions. The architects, on the contrary, felt the room adequate in itself and everywhere bore in mind the needs of living organism. They kept the hall way and corridors severe and simple. They laid the floors In marble and tiling to withstand the tread of generations. They decorated the ceiling richly. but they made no contracts for mural paintings. A conspicuous contrast from the example of the Boston and the Congressional Li- braries. In this instance 1t was felt wiser to leave blank panels which may be filled as the artistic consciousness of the city. the commemorative needs of the day and the private munificence of the hour may suggest.
 As mechanism, as a masterpiece of convenience, the library is believed to be without equal in the world It has Iacllltles both ordinary and extraordinary never before attempted There is a read ing room for the bind. There is a charming little room for children, with diminutive chairs and low tables, quite in the manner of a nursery over which a motherly superintendent will have charge. There are eight private rooms for the use of scholars. It was remem- bered, for instance, that Rear Admiral Mahan wrote his monumental works on the influence of sea power almost entirely in the public rooms of the Astor H. brary.
 But the crowning glory of the edice is the great reading room, the largest in the world, on the top floor at the rear surmounting the stack room. It runs 295 feet in length, 77 feet in width and stands 50 feet high, with ceilings painted to simulate the cloud-drifted sky.
 There are 63 miles of shelves in the stack room alone and 27 miles more in other rooms devoted to special depart ments, making 90 miles of shelf room in all.
 Unlike so many mocern buildings the ancients built, for eternity. :. The vault of the rotunda is true vault, not a veneer hung from supports above. The walls are solid masonry. The room is masonry, tiling and metal. Steel has only been used where the ancients would have used wood. The millions that went Into 1t will endure, and as the library is enriched from year to year by gift and legacy it will grow in beauty and use fitness.