Third Floor & McGraw Rotunda

Narrator: On the third floor, the central McGraw Rotunda serves as a gateway to historic reading rooms; special collections; galleries with rotating exhibits; and striking examples of the library’s architectural flourishes.

This rectangular room features a barrel-vault ceiling, wood-paneled walls, fluted square pillars, arches, free-standing candelabras, marble benches, and large-scale narrative murals, part of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA).

On the rotunda ceiling, in a gilded frame, is a mural of a blue sky. Clouds surround the Greek god Prometheus as he clutches fire. Mortal humans clamber on the mountain below.

In the arches beside the east and west doorways, four panels depict The Story of the Recorded Word.

The first panel reveals the prophet Moses descending Mount Sinai, carrying one of the stone tablets etched with the Ten Commandments, while the other lies broken at his feet. Below, the Children of Israel dance before the Golden Calf.

The second panel depicts a medieval scribe—a monk with a ring of hair around a bald head in white robes copying a manuscript. In the distance, people flee a burning town.

In the third panel, a white-bearded Johannes Gutenberg presents a printed page of the Bible to an official.

The fourth panel shows Ottmar Mergenthaler—a German-American inventor—at a typesetting machine. In the foreground, two men peer at a newspaper, while in the distance, a newsboy hawks a paper near the Brooklyn Bridge.

On the north and south side of the McGraw Rotunda, arched doorways lead to corridors and stairways. Pale-red jasper marble frames the entrances to the Edna Barnes Salomon Room to the east and the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room to the west.

Visual highlights of the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room include tall arched windows, long wooden tables with copper-colored lamps, two tiers of bookshelves, a wooden service desk with a canopy, and a carved-wood ceiling with a mural of pink-tinted clouds in a blue sky.

An ornate wooden doorway leads from the catalog room to Rose Main Reading Room. The length of two city blocks, this elegant space is reserved  for research and quiet study. Above a central aisle lined with long tables and bronze lamps is a 52-foot-high wood ceiling painted with murals of clouds. Bookshelves line the room, holding reference books. In the middle of the room is a wooden structure with carved columns, arched openings for service, and a clock mounted above either side.

Interpretive commentary follows.

Alison Stewart: You have ascended to the top floor. If Astor Hall is the heart of the Schwarzman Building, the third floor is the nerve center. If you took the stairs, it was quite a journey, and that’s kind of the point. Architect Liz Leber.

Liz Leber: The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is an example of a library that was definitely designed to be somewhat of a temple of knowledge; that you had to ascend from the street.

Alison Stewart: The design was also a practical one—remember, this is a working library. This is where researchers put the extensive collections to work, and the building’s floor plan was part of the vision of the library’s first Director, Dr. John Shaw Billings. Keith Glutting.

Keith Glutting: Think back to 1911, to 1900 when they were conceiving the library. New York was loud. There was noise. There was pollution. The idea of opening the windows and researching on the first floor or reading in peace and quiet was not going to happen. Dr. Billings insisted that the main reading room should be on the top floor, facing Bryant Park where there was light and air and relative calm, and work could be done more easily.

Alison Stewart: And at the center of the third floor, is the McGraw Rotunda. Like Astor Hall, it is another piece of architectural and design magic. Looking up, you can’t help but feel in awe of the dramatically sweeping arches and matching half circle window bays. This space, too, has evolved over time.

Keith Glutting: The rotunda was not originally decorated as you see today. In 1939, under a Works Project Administration program, a mural was added, and this was done by Edward Laning, Jr., a local artist.

Alison Stewart: Each panel traces a milestone in his epic mural called The Story of the Recorded Word.

Keith Glutting: And what you’re looking at is a history of the written word starting on the ceiling, with Prometheus carrying the flame that he’s stolen from the gods, this incredible myth, and what this symbolizes is the beginning of learning, the beginning of the word, the beginning of reading and writing.

Alison Stewart: The story continues around the walls of the rotunda beginning with Moses carrying a tablet containing half of the Ten Commandments and ending at the first use of the type-setting machine in New York.

On one side of the rotunda is the entrance to the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room and beyond that—the iconic Rose Main Reading Room. A designated interior landmark and one of New York’s most beautiful spaces, the Rose Main Reading Room is a quiet place where anyone is welcome to come in to read, conduct research, use a computer, or study. If you’re not ready to dive into a book yet but still want to see the reading room, you can sign up for a guided tour.

Be sure to visit the Salomon Room, across the rotunda from the Catalog Room. And, if you head to the north end of the hall you’ll find the Berg and Pforzheimer special collections. At both locations you can hear more about the history of the Schwarzman Building and some of the treasures it contains.