The Committee to Save the New York Public Library will hold a vigil in opposition to the plans for the NYPL’s 42nd Street and Mid Manhattan Libraries on Monday, June 3rd, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at the 5th Avenue entrance to the 42nd Street Library.
The vigil will coincide with the New York Public Library Spring fundraising gala. The event is co-sponsored by Citizens Defending Libraries, and will feature an appearance by Rev. Billy and his choir.
The Committee to Save the New York Public Library is calling for a halt to the $350 million Central Library Plan, which it says would “irreparably damage the 42nd Street Library – one of the world’s great research libraries and a historic landmark.” The Central Library Plan also calls for the sale of the Mid-Manhattan Library at 40th and Fifth Avenue, which the committee says is the most heavily used library in the city.
The NYPL administration plans to remove the 42nd Street Library’s seven-story book stacks, install a circulating library in their place, and move about 1.5 million books to a New Jersey off-site storage facility. The new circulating library would replace the Mid-Manhattan Library and the Science, Industry and Business Library (at 34th and Madison), which opponents of the plan say is less than one-third the size of the two existing libraries.
“This plan was created through a closed process with no public input, and has been condemned by leading architecture critics such as Ada Louise Huxtable in the Wall Street Journal and Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times,” a statement issued to the press today says.
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