By Jeffrey Page

Mischief is afoot at the New York Public Library, where the management wishes to redesign the grand old building at 42nd and Fifth and turn much of it into a huge circulating library – “the crown jewel of the branch system” – the breathless president of the library says.

In doing so, the Daily News reports, roughly 3 million books and papers would have to be relocated out of the stacks in midtown and housed in Princeton, N.J. This means that if you’re doing research in the main reading room at 42nd Street – known as “Room 315” to everyone who’s ever worked at the library – it’s possible you’d have to wait 24 hours for the material you need to be delivered to New York.

Management is focused on that crown jewel business, plus the availability of $150 million from the city to spiff up a world class research facility that needs no spiffing. Serious users of the library see the project as a diminishing of its importance.

Some library stories.

–Let us return to the early Sixties when I worked in NYPL’s Current Periodicals Division – known simply as “Room 108” – in the southeast corner of the first floor. Room 108 housed the most popular magazines of the time such as Life, Time, Consumer Reports, Ramparts, the Saturday Evening Post plus any number of social sciences and medical journals. It also was the repository for some famously obscure, less-in-demand publications. I don’t recall specific titles in this last group but every so often a patron would fill out a call slip asking for something like the Journal of Guernsey Cattle Management in Southwestern Manitoba.

–Life and the other favorite titles were available at the call desk unless Patron No. 1 was already reading an issue that Patron No. 2 requested. We drew some interesting characters in those days such as a slightly crazed Patron No. 2 who’d sit down and stare Patron No. 1 into hurrying up.

–Many of the less popular titles were shelved in the stacks, which were closed to the public. One of my jobs was to find requested publications in the stacks and bring them to the reader in Room 108. It was a pleasant break from the routine of refiling magazines that had been returned to the call desk. Once, it became a little more complicated.

I was wandering through the miles of stacks looking for the American Journal of 18th Century Northwestern Anthropological Studies (which did not, and does not, exist) when I heard a noise that sounded like a suppressed groan. As I rounded a corner, I encountered a most remarkable sight. It was a man, on top of a woman, both on a large wooden desk. Flesh was visible. I believe the expression is in flagrante delicto. I stopped on a dime, turned, and returned to Room 108 to inform the patron that the number he requested had been sent to the bindery and was not available – the standard explanation for periodicals we couldn’t find.

Others have related such stories. I saw it.

–The job didn’t pay much, but Room 108 was a great place to work. My supervisor was a tall, gray-haired Russian émigré named Mrs. Patterson, whose first name for me is long lost. We liked Mrs. Paterson because whenever there was a complaint about a clerk – “He didn’t say, ‘Good morning,’” or “She didn’t get my magazine quickly enough” or “Whaddaya mean someone else is reading it; there’s no one else here” – she almost always took our side.

–The boring part of the job was reshelving all the magazines that had been returned. Every so often, I’d see something interesting and start reading. This annoyed Mrs. Patterson.

–The summer heat in Room 108 could be brutal and there was no air conditioning in Current Periodicals. We had a device that was a combination thermometer and barometer. When the combined readings reached a certain number – I think it was 100 – the library closed Room 108. On especially bad days, one of the clerks would stand by the weather instruments and surreptitiously rub the little bowl of mercury to make it go a little higher a little faster. I think this scam worked once.

–The marble lions guarding the façade on Fifth Avenue were placed in 1911 and were never named Leo or Lena. In fact for their first 20 years they had no names at all. But during the mid-Thirties, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them Patience and Fortitude, two traits he believed New Yorkers would need to get through the Great Depression. The other story about Patience to the south and Fortitude to the north is that they are reputed to growl every time a virgin walks past.

–The reason you sometimes had to wait more than a half hour for the books you requested to be sent up from the stacks – when there was no one ahead of you on the call line – was occasionally because the clerk took an interest in your material, or because he was napping.

–Short take: The library’s whimsical telephone number in those days before all-numerical numbers also provided its location – OXford 5-4200.

jeffrey@zestoforange.com