Second Floor: Creating New Knowledge

Narrator: The second floor is home to two research centers reserved for long-term use of the collections:

Gold letters on a wooden doorway announce the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers—an international fellowship program granting access to the Library’s collections to create new work and encouraging the exchange of ideas.

And, in a hallway off the main passage, the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities includes four study rooms and the Lenox and Astor Room, where special events highlight unique collections.

Astor Hall is below a gallery overlook on the second floor. The arched windows above the three doors reveal a glimpse of Fifth Avenue. Freestanding candelabras illuminate the majestic marble entrance hall.

The corridor beside the overlook boasts classical features, including marble walls, curved arches, and a decorative marble drinking fountain featuring a brass lion above an oval basin.

Interpretive commentary follows.

Eric Klinenberg: Let me let you in on a secret:

Alison Stewart: Eric Klinenberg, NYU sociology professor and author of Palaces for the People.

Eric Klinenberg: There’s a room called the Cullman Center, and in that room you will find 15 of the most fortunate scholars on earth. It’s an annual fellowship for writers who come to spend the year in the New York Public Library just reading and writing. It is an amazing, amazing place.

Alison Stewart: The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, located on the north end of this floor, is indeed unique. It provides an invaluable opportunity to the participants to create works that will contribute to our literary and cultural conversations. For example, during their time as Cullman Center Fellows, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jennifer Egan wrote Manhattan Beach, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author Colson Whitehead wrote his acclaimed novel Sag Harbor. And Annette Gordon-Reed, who is now a Library Trustee, authored two books about the life and legacy of Thomas Jefferson.

Also on this floor is the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities—a space with dedicated reading rooms for researchers and writers whose work would benefit from intensive use of the collections. It is also where many who are new to research can come to learn about how to get started and dig deeper into the collections. You could think about each door as a portal to possibility—the research and work being done there hold limitless potential.

The New York Public Library has a long tradition of being a place of inspiration and aspiration. It’s where feminist and activist Betty Friedan wrote her groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique and author and journalist Robert Caro wrote The Power Broker.

Now, if you are standing in front of the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities, turn around and take in that view… Both Astor Hall and the city beyond. Architect Liz Leber.

Liz Leber: It’s really a beautiful urban moment. It’s these views of the city that make such interesting connections between the library, which often feels very inward facing, and then its context of being right in the heart of the middle of Manhattan.

Alison Stewart: As you look out, you are gazing eastward along 41st Street… also known as “Library Way.” Much as the Library is a monument to history, literature, and research, the nearly fifty brass plaques that line the sidewalk of Library Way honor literary luminaries. Quotes from Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and other treasured writers celebrate the power of the written word and literally pave the way to and from the library.