Landmarks Preservation Commission November 13, 2001, Designation List 331 LP-2098 NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, CHA THAM SQUARE BRANCH, 31 East Broadway (aka 31-33 East Broadway), Manhattan. Built 1903. McKim, Mead & White, architects. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 280, Lot 44 On July 31 , 2001 the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of The New York Public Library, Chatham Square Branch, and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No . l). The hearing was duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of Jaw. Three people testified in favor of designation, including representatives of The New York Public Library, the Society for the Architecture of the City, and the Historic Districts Council; there were no speakers in opposition. Summary Opened on November 2, 1903, the Chatham Square Branch of The New York Public Library is the third Carnegie branch library built in New York City. It is one of twenty in Manhattan and one of sixty-seven in New York City, built when Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million in 1901 to establish a city-wide branch library system. The preeminent and nationally influential architectural firm of Mc Kim, Mead & White designed the Chatham Square Branch. This bold library design was the firm' s first of twelve Carnegie libraries; the 1923 Fordham Branch was their last. The library' s classically-inspired style, with its characteristic vertical plan, arched entrance offset to one side, carved stone ornament, including Ionic columns at the upper floors, and tall arched first floor and rectangular second and third floor windows providing abundant lighting to a simple interior, is characteristic of the urban Carnegie library type. The library has played a prominent role in the neighborhood for nearly one hundred years. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS Large numbers of Chinese moved to the U.S. from the History of Chatham Square' 1840s to work on the railroads and to prospect for Chatham Square was named after William Pitt, the gold, but few of the immigrants traveled to New York Earl of Chatham, who tried to prevent the war between City in that period. In the 1870s they moved to New England and America when he was in Parliament. In York after completion of the railroad and an outbreak the eighteenth century the area was farmland, although of anti-Chinese violence in the West. Chinatown was it was just northeast of the City. The Bowery, running established around Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets, at north from the square, was a former Indian path leading the northwest side of Chatham Square, and as early as all the way to Harlem. The Collect Pond, a large fresh the 1880s Chinese shops faced the Square. Chinese water pond that was used as the reservoir for population growth slowed after 1882 when a series of eighteenth-century New York, lay just to the west. New laws were enacted that restricted immigration. Yorkers ice-skated on the pond and it was used for the Chinatown grew slowly in that period but developed first steamboat trials in 1796. The encroaching city complex organizations, dominated by the mutual aid caused the pond to become seriously polluted and it was societies. The area served Chinese Americans and filled in by 1813. By the early nineteenth century Chinese immigrants throughout the Metropolitan area. Chatham Square was a major junction, transportation By the 1890s Chinatown was a tourist attraction and it hub and retail center, with a post office, theater, and was featured in the 1892 King's Handbook to New numerous shops. York City. Chinese immigration expanded slowly after The library site on East Broadway, then known as World War II when some of the restrictive laws were Harman Street, was part of the Rutgers farm. In the late lifted and Chinese were granted the right to become eighteenth century Colonel Henry Rutgers laid his farm citizens. The Chinese population grew rapidly after out in lots and leased them out with building covenants 1965 with further easing of restrictions on immigration calling for substantial brick buildings. This attracted according to race. In 1965 the core of Chinatown merchants, professionals, and artisans such as covered seven blocks and was bounded on the east by shipwrights and sail makers. the Bowery. By the late 1970s the Chinatown core By the mid-1800s Irish immigrants had moved into expanded in the across Bowery to encompass East row houses converted to multiple dwellings. The Broadway as well as a number of other streets to the merchants' houses along East Broadway became east and north. The Chatham Square library today densely packed tenant-houses, precursors to tenements. primarily serves a Chinese American and immigrant Rear buildings were built in the yards of the houses, population. increasing the density. The notorious and dangerous Five Points slum was just a few blocks west of the History of Manhattan Libraries2 library site, on the filled-in Collect Pond. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Italians settled in the area from the 1870s, when libraries in New York City were private, institutional, four-to-six-story tenements began to be built. These or subscription. The New York Society Library, a buildings filled the lots with courtyards to provide at subscription library where users paid a membership least minimal light and air. Little Italy was established fee, was established in 1754, and Columbia University just to the west of the library site, around Mulberry opened a library by 1757. Both were destroyed during Street. In 1894, when the city completed the demolition the Revolutionary War but were rebuilt, and by 1876 of the Five Points tenements a park was created on the Columbia had one of the largest collections in the Five Points site. At first named Mulberry Bend Park, country. Reading rooms, operated as businesses or by by 1911 it was renamed after an Italian, Christopher non-profit organizations, made books available to the Columbus. Jewish immigrants settled in the Lower East public, and bookseller Garrett Noel opened the Side by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries earliest-known reading room in 1763. and the Chatham Square area was primarily a Jewish Institutions including The New-York Historical neighborhood at the time the library was built. This Society, the Cooper Union, and Union Theological period represented the height of immigration to the Seminary opened libraries in the first half of the United States and the Lower East Side was nineteenth century. New York State legislation exceptionally overcrowded, with very few parks, enabling City support of libraries was passed in the schools, libraries, and any other social welfare 1830s, but libraries were privately supported for most structures. of the nineteenth century. The Astor Library, the Today East Broadway is in the heart of Chinatown. City's first free public reference library, incorporated 2 in 1849. The Lenox Library, a private collection of The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public rare and reference books, incorporated in 1870. By Library, and The Queens Borough Public Library. 1876 there were about ninety various libraries and In 1901, when the library institutions were large collections in New York City. and cohesive enough to suit him, Andrew Carnegie The earliest branch library system was the private donated $5.2 million to New York City to build a New York Free Circulating Library, established in system of branch libraries in all five boroughs. The 1878 to provide education and self-help for the poor. grant was divided among the three library systems, Support came from Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, with The New York Public Library receiving $3.36 Cornelius Vanderbilt and other wealthy New Yorkers, million, and Brooklyn and Queens allocated $1.6 and from public funds beginning in 1887. There were million and $240,000 respectively. The grant bought eleven branches by 1901. The smaller Aguilar Free sixty-seven libraries in all five boroughs, two more Library Society was started in 1886 to foster the "free than originally envisioned.6 In a 1901 letter to John circulation of carefully selected literature, in the homes Shaw Billings, Carnegie said that: of the people of this City, with distributing branches in Sixty-five libraries at one stroke probably localities where the Jewish population was dense. "3 The breaks the record, but this is the day of big organization, later associated with the Educational operations and New York is soon to be the Alliance, was named after Grace Aguilar, an English biggest of Cities. 7 novelist and Sephardic Jew. There were four branches Andrew Carnegie rose from poverty to become by 1901, including one at 197 East Broadway, a few one of the wealthiest men in the United States after he blocks north of the present Chatham Square Branch. sold his steel business to J.P. Morgan in 1901. He began donating to libraries in 1881, but with the grant The New York Public Library and Andrew Carnegie4 to New York City he started the vast, worldwide The New York Public Library was established in operation which made him unique in the world of 1895 as a private corporation, which received limited philanthropy. public funds. Formed initially by the merger of the Andrew Carnegie based his donations on a Astor and Lenox Libraries and the Tilden Trust, it was philosophy of giving he developed in the 1870s and primarily concerned with building a major reference 1880s. He believed that the wealthy should live library on the site of the old Croton Reservoir at Fifth modestly and, while still living, give away their funds A venue and 42nd Street. The consolidation of New for the good of humanity.