Losing an Institution

I have three or four favorite places in New York City, where I go to find some quiet and respite away from the general din of the city—the East River waterfront at Carl Schurz Park, the Astor Court in the Metropolitan Museum, the Cloisters and Heather Garden in Ft. Tryon Park, and of course the Children’s Room in the Donnell Library on 53rd Street (across from, but often much better than, the more famed Museum of Modern Art). Since 1971 the Children’s Room has been an oasis of children’s literature; I’ve been going there now and then for the past few years, and in that time it’s been fairly bursting at the seams with fiction, nonfiction, picture books, and myriad other wonderful things. My last visit was occasioned by missing a film at the Tribeca Film Festival, courtesy of Saturday subway construction. Upon arriving I was delighted to learn it was National (or International?) Puppetry Day: the place was packed with adults and youngsters thrilling to Punch, Judy, and a few other scrappy characters I didn’t recognize. Both the crowd and the show made it a little difficult to look for the book I was seeking, but I didn’t mind and I almost missed the next screening I was scheduled to attend. For the moment the joy of live, interactive theater eclipsed anything at the festival.

I was distraught, however, by what—or who—was not there. Truth be told I generally haven’t gone to Donnell for the books—I prefer to request they be sent to my local branch and skip the commute. The reason both for going and for ranking it as one of my favorite New York City spots was the presence of the original Winnie-the-Pooh dolls (stuffed animals, soft toys, etc.) from Christopher Robin Milne, donated to the library in 1987.

A. A. Milne bought a teddy bear for his son at Harrod’s in London in 1921. Winnie-the-Pooh became famous through his literary exploits and eventually wound up, like so many other Europeans, in New York City. Along with Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, and Roo, Pooh has been the chief attraction in the Donnell Children’s Room for years now—the guestbook logs local visitors and pilgrims from far-off places like Norway, Australia, Brazil, and, of course, England. I liked to visit, both before and after having a child, to tap into the aura of Pooh (and perhaps the tao, though I’m not sure), to be reminded that the core of the Pooh mystique is the interaction between a father and a son (not a multimillion-dollar industry of books, animation, and ancillary products), facilitated by this ragged, fading stuffed bear. The jouissance is in the simplicity of the object.

At any rate, Pooh and his friends were gone, evidently victims of a rendition off to the main branch on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. They would, I hoped, return shortly. But I learned in last week’s New Yorker that they will not. The Donnell Branch Library, with its prime location, is set to close next month to make way for, horror of horrors, yet another midtown hotel, this one an eleven-story affair owned by Orient-Express Ltd. This, of course, is ridiculous. As this article on the building’s architecture notes, the Donnell branch exterior consists of muted Indiana limestone; it does not draw attention to itself in the way the MOMA does since its own recent renovation, but it is a quiet and stoic building, one of midtown’s most important cultural institutions. In addition to the Children’s Room and a young adult collection it houses the city library’s main audiovisual collection, including videotapes, DVDs, filmstrips and private viewing facilities for 16 and 35mm. As if this weren’t enough, another floor houses the World Languages collection, the New York Public Library’s flagship foreign language collection. Add to that the recently renovated bays of public computers with Internet access (which helped me land my first New York job) and some of the most convenient and clean restrooms in midtown, and you’ve got one of New York City’s greatest cultural resources.

The MOMA is truly brilliant (we recently took Loretta there for the very kid-friendly Olafur Eliason exhibit), but sadly, the same gentrification that has now made it one of the most expensive museums in the nation ($20 per ticket, effectively putting attendance out of reach for ordinary New Yorkers with the exception of free but crowded Friday nights) has also evidently evicted the block’s other main attraction, again in favor of well-moneyed tourists (the new hotel’s rooms will run from $750 to $2,000 a night). The deal is not a complete wash, however, in that a vastly reduced amount of floor space at ground level and in the basement will be reserved for the library. It seems that the NYPL could have got more than the $59 million dollars they earned (to renovate the library would have cost an estimated $48 million) given the location across from the MOMA and around the corner from the Rockefeller Center, but this retention of floor space may have had something to do with the final selling price. The new space, to open by sometime in 2012, will have 19,000 square feet of public space, down from 42,000, and all of the aforementioned special collections will be moved elsewhere, but NYPL President Paul LeClerc seems hopeful, stating that this renovated facility will be useful and beautiful while the cash influx will assist with badly needed repairs elsewhere. I sympathize with his position, and that of all cash-strapped librarians, but I can’t help but feel a loss with the removal of the old building. (Most of my information here came from the New York Times and LibraryJournal.com.)

Anyway, this rather dreary news was made public last fall but only reached me today at the end of an article in last week’s New Yorker, “The Lion and the Mouse: The Battle That Reshaped Children’s Literature” by Jill Lepore. This article also informed me that all the children’s material, not just our Hundred Acre Wood friends, will be relocating to the main 42nd Street branch. This, it turns out, is where these materials were housed before the construction of the Donnell branch half a century ago. A permanent space in the main branch will be unveiled for that building’s 2011 centennial, and in the meantime the children’s books will be in a temporary facility on the main floor, my guess being the exhibition room to the south of the gift shop. All of the materials will be retained and surely eventually improved; a decade from now it will seem as natural to visit Pooh between the lions as it once was on 53rd Street. I commend LeClerc, the Donnell children’s librarians, and all those who labor with them, struggling to keep the libraries open six days a week and otherwise blessing our lives. For news on where the collections are heading and the final public events at Donnell see here.

The New Yorker article, by the way, is an excellent recounting of the ideological battle between pioneering children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore and author E. B. White over the publication of his first children’s book, Stuart Little, which was evidently incredibly controversial—for some people—at the time. It's a story I was completely unfamiliar with, and it was wonderful to see children's literature treated so respectfully within the covers of one of my favorite journals (if one that obviously figures in White's biography).