With Its New Library, SoHo ‘Finally Getting … Civilization’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SoHo residents and the many shoppers who are attracted to area’s vast retail offerings now have a new place to read about food, art, and a lot more, as the Mulberry Street Branch Library opened yesterday near the Puck building.
The executive director of the SoHo Alliance, Sean Sweeney, said SoHo “is finally getting some civilization.”
Cast iron columns, exposed brick, yellow pine beams, and oak floors are reminders that this space once held a candy factory dating to 1886. Renovation began in 2004.
On the ground floor, the staff broke into applause as the first library patron, Frances Kotkov, who grew up in Little Italy, strolled to the circulation desk to return a book on Florence that she had borrowed from the Hudson Park Branch. Ms. Kotkov said she was delighted that her neighborhood now had a library. “We don’t have to go to a bookstore and buy a cup of coffee,” she said.
At a ceremony, the New York Public Library president, Paul LeClerc, praised a number of people for their hard work, including a City Council member, Vincent Gentile, who chairs a subcommittee on libraries.
Mr. LeClerc and others also drew attention to a former council member, Judge Kathryn Freed, for her early advocacy for the library. She told The New York Sun that in late 1990s area residents held a demonstration in front of a former bank building near Spring and Centre streets. Asked what else SoHo now needed, she said, “It could use a few more parks.”
Jane Kunstler, who works on information systems at the branch libraries, was chatting on the stairwell with “Fortitude,” a person dressed in a large lion costume named for one of the two lion sculptures at the main branch on Fifth Avenue.
A writer, Tram Combs, told the Sun he hoped that Jersey Street, a narrow road on which the library is located off Mulberry Street, would become a public outdoor café.
The audience laughed earlier that afternoon, when a NYPL trustee, Joshua Steiner, said it was appropriate that one could find at this branch the book by Dr. Seuss, “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”
