New York Public Library To Add Donor to Façade
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Patience, Fortitude — and Stephen Schwarzman?
When the New York Public Library completes a $1 billion, six-year renovation, the two stone lions that have famously bracketed its front steps for nearly a century will have to move over, symbolically, that is, to make room for a Wall Street financier whose money kick-started the project.
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday approved the library’s request to have the name of the founder and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, Mr. Schwarzman, etched into the walls of the landmarked, 1911 Beaux Arts edifice on Fifth Avenue.
Under the plan, Mr. Schwarzman’s name will appear three times in front of the Fifth Avenue entrance — on a horizontal slab and the bases of two columns — and twice on columns on the 42nd Street side. The inscriptions in letters 11/2 to 21/2 inches high will read “The New York Public Library,” and below that, “Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.”
The proposal passed the commission on an 8-0 vote despite objections raised by two organizations: the area community board and the Historic District Council, a private advocacy group.
The community board’s landmarks chairman, Howard Mendes, said the library’s plan to carve Mr. Schwarzman’s name at five places was “excessive and unnecessarily intrusive,” and would detract from the names of the library’s three original donors, Samuel Tilden, John Jacob Astor, and James Lenox, already carved in foot-high letters on the Fifth Avenue facade.
But architect Nathan Hoyt told the commission that etching Mr. Schwarzman’s name onto the facade was in keeping with the tradition of recognizing donors.
