NYPL Receives Nine-Figure Commitment; Experts Expect Stone Carver Unemployment Rate To Plummet By 100 Percent
I certainly don’t need my name inscribed on the facade of a landmarked building, you know, right at waist level, but since you asked:
Posted: March 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Architecture & Infrastructure, Follow The MoneyThe New York Public Library’s venerable lion-guarded building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street is to be renamed for the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who has agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own.
The project, to be announced on Tuesday, aims to transform the Central Library into a destination for book borrowing as well as research. The Mid-Manhattan branch, on the east side of Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, will be sold and its circulating collection absorbed into the new space.
The gift from Mr. Schwarzman, a library trustee and buyout guru who made fortunes as the chief executive of the Blackstone Group, is among the largest to any cultural institution in the city’s history. The 1911 Beaux Arts structure on Fifth Avenue will be called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building after construction is completed around 2014. The building is protected by landmark status, and the library expects the name to be etched on the building should approval be granted by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.
“We hope to incise the name of the building in stone in a subtle, discreet way on either side of the main entrance about three feet off the ground,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the library’s board of trustees. “It’s in keeping with the dignity of the building.”
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Mr. Schwarzman said it was the library that proposed renaming the landmark building. “They said, ‘We’d like you to be the lead gift and give us $100 million and we’d like to rename the main branch after you,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘That sounds pretty good.'”