Library Week, the Landmarks Law, and Our Local Branches

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know,” Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.” So it’s a good thing that four outstanding, historic branches are located in our neighborhoods. This month, we have even more reason to celebrate these institutions during National Library Week, which highlights the ever-growing importance libraries and library professionals play in local communities, and the 60th anniversary of New York City’s Landmarks Law that protects them now and in the future.

Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue

The most visible branch of the New York Public Library in and around Greenwich Village, thanks to its tall clock tower, is the Jefferson Market Library on Sixth Avenue between Christopher and West 10th Streets. Built in 1875-77, the building was originally designed as a courthouse in a High Victorian Gothic style by Frederick Clark Withers and Calvert Vaux. In a poll of architects taken in the 1880s, the structure was voted the fifth most beautiful building in the United States.

As a courthouse, the building saw several noteworthy trials in addition to thousands of more everyday ones. It drew national attention in 1906, for example, when Harry K. Thaw appeared before the magistrate and was reprimanded without bail for the murder of star architect Stanford White over the victim’s affair with the accused’s wife. In 1909, strikers at the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Company on Washington Place were arrested and brought here for trial in an attempt by owners to intimidate workers seeking to improve factory conditions; the effort failed on both sides of the trial, ultimately leading to the horrific and deadly fire at the factory two years later.

The court was relocated from Jefferson Market in 1945, and the building was left to decay in 1958 when other government agencies that had been using it like the Police Department also departed. The wrecking ball was looming when neighborhood advocates, led by noted preservationist Margot Gayle, organized a grassroots campaign to save the courthouse. (Read our oral history with Gayle here.) Thanks to those efforts, Mayor Robert Wagner announced in 1961 that the building would be preserved and converted into a branch of the New York Public Library. The Jefferson Market Library opened for business in 1967.

Two years later, the library was included and preserved in the Greenwich Village Historic District. In its designation, the Landmarks Preservation Commission noted that the “architects drew on the finest Ruskinian Gothic and Italian Renaissance sources. … With its rich polychromy and horizontal band courses, the building positively glows with color. With its many gables, tower and high roofs it makes a picturesque profile against the sky.”

Ottendorfer Library, 135 Second Avenue

The Ottendorfer Library has the distinction of being both one of the first buildings designed specifically as a public library and the oldest extant branch of the New York Public Library system. Its construction arose from the birth of the New York Free Circulating Library, founded in 1878 with the purpose of contributing to the “moral and intellectual elevation of the masses,” and from the need to improve the lives of the booming Kleindeutschland community of German immigrants that existed in what is today the East Village.

Five years after the Free Circulating Library was established, German-American philanthropists Anna and Oswald Ottendorfer started construction on the German Dispensary and an accompanying library on Second Avenue near East 9th Street, with goals of strengthening both body and mind for their fellow immigrants. On January 10, 1884, the pair turned the library over to the Free Circulating Library, which named the building in their honor. 

Opening to the public on December 7, 1884, the Ottendorfer Library was designed by German-born architect William Schickel in a combination of Queen Anne and neo-Italian Renaissance styles with an exterior ornamented by innovative terracotta putti. Ottendorfer wished to provide this community with books to cultivate their minds and assist assimilation into American culture: Half of the library’s 8,000 original books were in German with the other half in English. This library also helped spur the growth of the Free Circulating Library to reach more communities in need, helped by public funding made possible through 1887 state legislation. By 1901, the Free Circulating Library system was incorporated by NYPL, resulting in a network that is now the nation’s largest public library system.

The Ottendorfer has the distinction of being both an individual landmark and an interior landmark. In its 1977 designation report, the LPC remarked that the library “is an interesting and personal combination of elements from several late Victorian building styles, although many of its details such as the very clear separation of each of the three floors by decorative friezes are ultimately derived from Italian Renaissance sources,” and noted that all of its ornamental detail was done using molded terra cotta, a building material then only recently introduced to New York.

Four years later, the agency honored the Ottendorfer’s interior, remarking how much of it still reflected original plans by Schickel, whose “careful detailing and the skillful use of Queen Anne design elements to create a modest, yet handsome space, make the Interior of the Ottendorfer Library an integral part of the total library design.” Interestingly, the interior was first set up with closed stacks, because it “had been felt by the founders that the poor population which used the library could not be trusted to use an open-shelf library,” but “the pride and responsibility which was taken in the use of the collection” led to the “democratizing innovation” of open shelves in 1897.

Tompkins Square Library, 331 East 10th Street

Just a few blocks away from the Ottendorfer, on East 10th Street near Avenue B, stands the Tompkins Square Library. Starting its service to the community in 1887 as the Fifth Street Branch of the Aguilar Free Library, the branch relocated three times until it established its current home across from Tompkins Square Park in 1904.

The white three-story structure was one of nearly 70 libraries funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in the city and hundreds more across the nation. The structure was one of 13 such Carnegie libraries across New York City designed by McKim Mead & White, perhaps the most famous and influential architectural firm of the day. The Tompkins Square Branch followed the same principles that had been applied to other New York City Library branch buildings, a distinct structure that stands out from its neighbors. Built in a simplified Beaux-Arts style, the library’s vertical plan features an arched entrance offset to one side; classically inspired style and carved stone ornament; and tall, arched first- and second-floor windows providing abundant lighting to a simple interior — all characteristic of the urban model for Carnegie libraries. 

In its 1999 designation report for the Tompkins Square structure, the LPC highlighted both architectural features and cultural impact, as this library “has been culturally, visually, and historically an important component of its community for [then more than 90] years which was the original intent for the Carnegie branches.”

Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street

Tucked away on Leroy Street near Seventh Avenue South in the West Village, the Hudson Park Library was the 10th Carnegie library built in Manhattan, first welcoming readers in 1906. The Colonial Revival–style branch was designed by Carrere & Hastings, well known for its work on a slightly larger library facility: the New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue and East 42nd Street. The architects mixed elements of Italian Renaissance with Federal-style architecture such as double-keystones, fanlights, and decorative ironwork in its palazzo-style building.

The library was designed initially to fill its entire lot, but the extension of Seventh Avenue south to Varick Street, which was done at an angle to the existing street grid and completed in 1917, required the demolition of several buildings on the block occupied by Hudson Park (today James J. Walker Park) and the library, resulting in irregular lots that were not developed until some years later. The original library building fortunately survived demolition, and in 1934 was expanded with an annex on one of those odd lots adjacent to its rear facade. The new annex contained space for more books and reading rooms, and provided a secondary entrance to the library via Seventh Avenue South.

The poet Marianne Moore worked at Hudson Park as a library assistant in the 1920s, contributing to the rich literary history of the neighborhood, all of which is highlighted on a plaque on the building’s facade. Another honor came to the branch in 2021 with a Village Award from Village Preservation for its work in the community.

The Hudson Park Library was included for preservation in the Greenwich Village Historic District Extension II, designated in 2010.

Learn more about the 60th anniversary of New York City’s Landmarks Law via our timeline map of preservation in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.