What’s Your Idea of a $1,500 Ice Cream Sundae?- You Can Get One In The Luxury Hotel That Replaced The Donnell Library, Along With $500 Cocktails

What should a $1,500 ice cream sundae should look like?

What’s your idea of what a $1,500 ice cream sundae should look like?

The latest word on extravagance will hit close to home for library lovers– It’s that they are now serving $1,500 ice cream sundaes at the luxury Baccarat Hotel that replaced the Manhattan’s central destination Donnell Library.  Remember, the $500 cocktails?  Too rich for your taste?  Don’t worry, there is a cheaper cocktail you can get for $450.

Noticing New York covers all the details here (and you can see what a $1,500 ice cream sundae actually looks like):

Where Manhattan’s Beloved Central Destination Donnell Library Once Stood: $500 Cocktails, $1,500 Ice Cream Sundaes, And Dining While Sitting On Coyote Pelts

It’s a follow-up to Noticing New York’s November 2015 article about the sale of Donnell and the luxury condos and establishments catering to the wealthy that replaced it:

Priorities To Be Replicated?: Private Luxury Now Abounding Where Former Donnell Library Stood, A "Replacement" Library Is Nowhere In Sight.  (The article was written on the 8th anniversary of the library’s sale.)

Want to see what a $1,500 ice cream sundae looks like?

NYC Libraries Are Being Sold For Huge Losses And For Minuscule Fractions of Their Value

People ask whether the public is at least getting good deals or "value" when we sell our libraries.  We absolutely are not.  We are selling our libraries for far less than their worth and far less than we have invested in them.  The losses are actually profoundly embarrassing notwithstanding the proclivity of library officials to deceptively characterize proceeds from sales as "profits," and as "hefty" rather than "paltry."  That's been true since the beginning. . .

. . .  The first library sold, the Donnell Library, the central destination, 97,000-square foot, five-story central destination library on what was documented to be the most valuable block in Manhattan at the time, was sold to net the NYPL less than $25,000 million.  The penthouse in the luxury tower that replaced it in the 50-story luxury tower replacing Donnell went on the market for $60 million.  Another single lower-level condo unit in the luxury building, 43A, sold for $20,110,437.50.  There is also a 114 guest room luxury hotel in the tower.  according to the Wall Street Journal, Chinese investors made that hotel,“the most highly valued hotel in the U.S.” after agreeing to buy it for “more than $230 million. . .  .more than $2 million a room.”

. . . The central destination Brooklyn Heights Library in Downtown Brooklyn, expanded and fully upgraded in 1993, one of the most modern and up-to-date libraries in the system would cost more than $120 million to replace.  The city sold it for less than its tear-down value, for less than its value as a vacant lot, and because it was sold to a developer who's inferior bid was not the highest bid, it's sale became the subject of one of the pay-to-play investigations of the de Blasio administration.  When costs are finally calculated it is likely the city and library administration officials will have netted less than $25 million from this library's ruination.

. . . In two suspicious real estate deals the NYPL has sold the 34th Street SIBL library, the city's biggest science library (in the former Altman's Department Store between Madison and Fifth Avenues) for an aggregate amount that, in adjusted for inflation terms, is just barely equal to the $100 million the public paid for that library in 1996.  That is despite the library's prime location and fact that since that time the New York real estate market has been surging by multiples that far outstrip inflation.  The above-ground portion of the technologically state-of-the-art library was sold to one of the world's wealthiest men, renowned, like a character in a James Bond novel for a owning a fleet of the world's largest yachts, a force of vintage war planes and for building the world's biggest plane.  Maybe this technologist magnate acquired the science library because his father worked in a library and he remembered tagging along with him, overwhelmed by the information and daydreaming of "'the sci-fi theme of a dying or threatened civilization that saves itself by finding a trove of knowledge.'" . . . This low gross amount that the NYPL receives for selling SIBL is not what the NYPL will net from the sale, because the sale, part of a consolidating shrinkage affecting also the Mid-Manhattan Library, will be costly.  That  overall plan now known as the “Midtown plan” is referred to on the NYPL's website as costing “$300 million.”

. . . The Sunset Park Library is being given away by the city, without bid, for nothing to an organization, the Fifth Avenue Committee, that is politically connected to Mayor de Blasio.  Incongruously, the city says that it cannot give the recently renovated Inwood Library away without bid, but it appears that the library will be similarly handed-off unfairly and without charge to another organization that has an inside track.

. . . Similarly, the hand-offs of library space in the Red Hook Library and Williamsburg Library to Spaceworks are essentially giveaways that conceptualize the library space as being somehow useless.

. . . Banishing books to expensively keep them off-site must also be regarded as another cost draining the public pocket book.

For complete information go back to our Citizens Defending Libraries Main Page (or to read through all the content of our Main Page in LONG FORM CLICK)

Real Estate News: Even While Sacrificing NYC PUBLIC Libraries To Create Real Estate Transactions, Developers Use The Creation of PRIVATE Libraries To Promote Their Projects

While NYC developers are clearly eyeing New York City public libraries for how they can be turned into real estate deals like, for instance, the luxury tower that the central destination Manhattan Donnell Library was turned into and the luxury tower that the central destination Brooklyn Heights Library is being turned into, developers apparently also value private libraries as a selling point for their developments.  Which is to say that as the industry is besieging and destroying public libraries it is creating small private libraries to sell its product.

Not that many months before it was announced that the Business Career and Education Library Brooklyn Heights Library serving the central business district in Brooklyn’s downtown would be sold for a shrink-and-sink real estate transaction, the New York Times ran a front page article on Sunday Real Estate Section an article about developer incorporation of private libraries into their projects to enhance their attraction marketing their product.  See: Buildings with Libraries: A Soft-Spoken Amenity, Joanne Kaufman, April 5, 2012.

Luxury tower apartments that replaced Donnell Library created were repeated advertised in the New York Timed featuring the private library in the Penthouse. 

Conceived at essentially the same time, the shrink-and-sink sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library replicated shrink-and-sink sale of the Donnell Library.  Those luxury tower apartments that the shrink-and-sink disposal Donnell Library created were advertised repeatedly with a double page spread in the front of the Sunday New York Times Magazine with a visual that featured a view of the private library in the building’s penthouse.  That’s the penthouse that was on the market for $60 million in stark contrast to the less than $25 million the NYPL netted when it sold for drastic shrinkage the five-story, 97,000 square foot library. . . .

. .  The calculations are embarrassing in other respects, including that the penthouse apartment devotes a far, far higher percentage of its floor space to luxury owner’s private library as a amenity than New York City devotes in its budget to public libraries as a shared resource serving all New Yorkers.  See- What’s Wrong With These Numbers?: The Baccarat Tower’s $60M Penthouse and NYC’s Library Budget, April 29, 2014.

Until this year (2016), the Brooklyn Heights Association annually replenished its war chest through house tours capitalizing on people’s voyeuristic infatuation and longing for luxury real estate living.  The tours afforded the public tantalizing views of the select interiors of many of the magnificent homes in the neighborhood.  Proceeds for the tours funded whatever fights the BHA took on in its proclaimed mission to protect the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.  In the 1980s until 1993, when it was finally accomplished, one of those fights was for a substantial enlargement of the Brooklyn Heights Library.  That substantial enlargement of the library was accompanied by a complete and full upgrade that made it one of the most technologically advanced and computer equipped libraries in Brooklyn.

 . . . Ironically, come 2013 the Brooklyn Heights Association promoted the sale and shrinkage of that same library (which through sale of real estate development rights would benefit the private saint Ann’s School behind the scenes- Saint Ann’s School with which the BHA and its decision-making library committee was tightly linked).

 . . .  Another irony: One of the most spectacular hits on the BHA house tour the year before the BHA started promoting the sale and shrinkage of the local public library, an extravaganza to induce mouth-watering salivation, was a townhouse equipped with its own two-story private library customized with magnificently detailed yellow-green wood bookshelves . . .   

The 2012 Times Real Estate section article about the real estate sales advantage of libraries for developers is about the creation of private libraries to be shared as common areas by all the residents of a building.  It has a senior VP of the real estate brokerage Corcoran Group, Tami Shaoul, explain that while when selling apartments, no buyers have told her that they, “must have a library,” their eyes “light up if they actually see one,” and  “It makes them feel good about the building because they imagine themselves having that quiet space.”

We also learn from the article that the existence of such a library can speak “to the fact that this was more than a building. It was a community of people who still read” and that “in the highly competitive New York marketplace” a common shared library “is a low-cost frill.”  This is in a developers’ “amenities arms race” involving more expensive amenities such as “cold storage, wine cellar, gym, pool, hot tub, children’s playroom, ’tween playroom, party room,” . . . real estate developers are spending money.  And we learn that the “library at New York by Gehry” in the financial district is “a hit” (with “leather sofas and accent chairs”) and that “some of New York’s glossiest and highest profile new developments boast of having one.”

If only we as a city could also boast of a wonderful, robustly supported public library around every corner from all of these developer projects.

Who Is Jared Kushner (Trump’s Son-in-law) In Relation To The Sale of Libraries And The Sell-Off Of Public Assets?

Jared Kushner is getting a lot of attention these days (like the cover of New York Magazine) for his ascendancy to enormous power by virtue of being Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser.  See: Jared Kushner's Rise to Unimaginable Power - The Young Trump- Jared Kushner is more like his father-in-law than anyone imagines, by Andrew Rice, January 2017.

Even before he was this, he was an interesting person to keep track of and fairly recently New York Magazine devoted a fair amount ink to him about his and his father’s weird interconnections with Chris Christie’s bridgegate scandal.  See:  The Former Classmate Who Could Take Chris Christie Down- Most Likely to Destroy a Governor- Will David Wildstein, star witness in the Bridgegate trial, take down his old high-school classmate Chris Christie? By Andrew Rice, September 18, 2016.  New York Magazine, picking up from the Washington Post, reported how Kushner sent David Wildstein, going to prison as a mastermind of the Bridgegate plot, an email that said, “For what it's worth, I thought the move you pulled was kind of badass.” - - -

 - - - Kushner actually recruited and hired Bill Stepien for the Trump campaign.  Stepien was Christie’s former top (“ruthless”?) political adviser, one of the people whom Christie fired for being embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal.

Now we have all sorts of articles coming out of the woodwork like the Village Voice and Lo-Down Jared Kushner-is-an-excruciatingly-evil-landlord stories: Jared Kushner's East Village Tenants 'Horrified' Their Landlord Will Be Working in the White House, by Steven Wishnia, January 12, 2017 and Lower East Side Groups to de Blasio: Jared Kushner is No Friend of New York City Tenants (being Tweeted a lot).

It’s time to provide some Citizens Defending Libraries context. . . .

. . .   Who is Jared Kushner in relation to the sale of libraries and the sell-off of public assets?

Here from Noticing New York:

The rushed and secretive sale and shrinkage of the Donnell Library (with a subsequent "ratification" by the NYPL board) stank and looked like an obvious scam with only the merest pretense of an effective bid:  There were only two ostensible bidders on the secret sale and since both bidders were inevitably destined to be doing a coordinated real estate deal there was no real incentive for them not already to be acting in partnership.

The sale was kept confidential until the last possible minute.  It was finally announced publicly in November of 2007 only because, as a publicly traded company, the purchaser, Oriental Express Hotels Ltd., had to disclose the agreement within within four days of the execution of the transaction.

. . .  and one of the principal financial beneficiaries of the secret sale of Donnell was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top campaign advisor.

There is, however, apparently one criminal investigation: US Attorney Preet Bharara is understood to be investigating Mayor de Blasio's apparent pay-to-play hand-off the Brooklyn Heights Library.  Like the way that an effective and above-board bid process was apparently side-stepped with the Donnell Library to hand off the library real estate to a new owner for far less than its value, the Brooklyn Heights Library is being handed off for far less than its value to the public and is being given to a developer who was not the high bidder.

See: Noticing New York: Snowden, Booz and the Dismantling of Libraries As We Know Them: Why Was A Private Government Spy Agency Hired to Take Apart New York's Most Important Libraries And Turn Them Into Something Else?,  October 30, 2016.

Remarkably, even with the insatiable eagerness of virtually the entire media establishment to cover all things Trump (something that surely helped "The Donald" get elected), all the media outlets ignored our Citizens Defending Libraries press release, sent to thousands of press addresses, of the Trmp/Kushner tie to the library sale: PRESS RELEASE: Donald Trump Connected To Sell-Off of NYC Libraries? This Explains Exactly How, August 24, 2015.

In this instance, what the media ignores has consequences and results in the public failing to make relevant connections soon enough.

Donald Trump has gone on to appoint, as a top economic advisor and liaison:

library-destroying Stephen A. Schwarzman, head of Blackstone, the world’s largest real estate investment firm (among other things), the NYPL trustee who helped push the Donnell real estate deal out the door to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and was even rumored to be personally involved in the deal through his own companies beforehand.

 See: Noticing New York: Donald Trump (Whose Son-In-Law Was In on Donnell Library Sale) Puts Library-Selling Stephen Schwarzman In Charge of Economic Policy, December 8, 2016.

This forebodes a sell-off of public assets in general, something that Citizens Defedning Libraries has been working to raise consciousness of and fight against: Our Public Assets Under Attack- A Calamity of the Commons Unfolding That We Must Act Collectively Against- How best To Express It?

A recent New York Times article started off reporting how privatizing prisons costs the public much more and delivers a far inferior product.  That's not to mention (as the article didn't) how privatizing prisons further incentivizing increased mass incarceration our country that already has the highest incarceration rate in the world housing around 22% or more of the world's prisoners, with less than 5% of the world’s population overall).  The article is probably a too cautiously conservative and somewhat too friendly to the idea of privatization in general, but it goes on to observe that the Trump administration wants to privatize lots of public assets and explain why that wouldn’t be good:

 privatization is likely to sweep through not only prisons. The president-elect wants to privatize health services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. He wants to privatize public infrastructure - drawing private sector companies to fix, build and manage bridges and roads, water supplies and airports. He is selling privatization as a surefire winner that will deliver better services for less public money.

"There's a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better," noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. "What is government going to be like when it is run by billionaire C.E.O.s that see the private sector as a solution to all the world's problems?"

A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false. 

See: Prisons Run by C.E.O.s? Privatization Under Trump Could Carry a Heavy Price, by Eduardo Porter, January 10, 2017

The article tells us about how Trump expressed hopes to privatize prisons on the campaign trail:

"With prisons I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons," Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail last year. "It seems to work a lot better."

Privatized prisons is one of the investments that library-selling Trump-appointed Stephen Schwarzman has involved himself with.

A month ago the New York Times reported how stocks went up for private companies in the wake of Trump’s election: Trump's Win Gives Stocks in Private Prison Companies a Reprieve, By Jeff Sommer December 3, 2016.

So who is Jared Kushner?

“Jared Kushner is the man,” said none other than Stephen Schwarzman introducing him in December at the Times Square headquarters of Morgan Stanley to a crowed assembly of NYC’s most powerful business leaders there to discuss the results of the presidential election.  . .

. . . That's from the Andrew Rice New York Magazine cover story although the article never mentions either Kushner's or Schwarzman's respective and integral involvements in the Donnell Library sale.  Similarly, although the Mr. Rice's New York Magazine article several times mentions Kuschner's purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue, his family real estate business's "flagship" building where Kuschner and his parents now have their offices, and although it goes into fair detail describing many aspects of that real estate purchase and its importance to Kushner, it never mentions* how integrally the 666 transaction and all its economic were tangled up with Kushner's simultaneous involvement with the sale of the adjacent Donnell.

(* It does however have a quick mention of Kushner in relation to the Robin Hood Foundation.)

Hillary Clinton & The Winning Campaign That Might Have Been- Thoughts From Citizens Defending Libraries

Clinton conceding the election today

What about the campaign that Hillary Clinton could have run?  The one that had she run she’d have been much more likely have won?

For example, one thing Clinton could have done was run a campaign that showed a responsible caring for libraries and concern about the plundering sales of our public assets.  Hillary Clinton could have criticized her landlord, Forest City Ratner, for being a gatekeeper involved in the cynical shrink-and-sink real estate deal selling the second biggest library in Brooklyn, the library standing right next to her national campaign headquarters which is actually, for development purposes, the same piece of real estate.  The library is the downtown Brooklyn Heights Library, but given the intersection where it is located you can call it the “Tillary Clinton Library.”

Yes, criticizing her landlord would have been biting the hand feeding her, but it would have been seen as courageous and honest.  It would also have freed Clinton up to attack Trump’s de facto campaign manager and political advisor, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for being a principal beneficiary involved in the cynical shrink-and-sink Donnell Library deal.

The Donnell Library, similarly sold for a minuscule fraction of its value to the public, was the model for the “Tillary Clinton Library” shrink-and-sink deal laying right at her doorstep.

Showing that she cared about libraries and fair play, Hillary Clinton could have called for that Donnell Library sale and the Heights Library sale to be investigated.

Yes, investigation might have caused some problems for her one-time campaign manager and fellow Democrat Bill de Blasio given his pay-to-play hand-off of the library to an inferior bidder.  Yes, pointing out the lack of investigation into Donnell could have been awkward for inert  fellow Democrats like NYS Attorney General Eric Schniederman or NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer. . .  That’s part of the point!. . .

. . .  Think how much more credible and independent Hillary would have proven herself to be.  And with a chance to lambaste Trump’s son-in-law/advisor she would have made headlines distinguishing herself.  The public cares about its libraries.  It cares about its public assets.  So long as Clinton was willing to criticize the shrink-and-sink sale her landlord was participating in, Trump could never have turned it around on her.

No, Hillary Clinton didn’t do this.  That would have been a different campaign.  Yes, it would have been a different campaign in all the ways that her campaign needed to be a different campaign overall.

It would have been a different campaign in all the ways that the campaigns of Democrats overall, and the representation they give us when elected, need to be a qualitatively different.

Maybe then, despite everything else they are up against, Democrats could start winning.  A difference they might appreciate.

Here is our Tweet of these Woulda/Coulda sentiments: 

HRC criticizes Ratner, her landlord, 4library sale - ditto, Kushner, Trump's campaign manager- &Result?

https://twitter.com/DefendLibraries/status/796399549204070400?lang=en

PICTURE & VIDEO Gallery: Opening Ceremony For 53rd Street “Replacement” For Donnell Library- “Where the Hell Is Donnell” Demonstration Outside

This page will be updated.

Today the NYPL held its opening ceremony for the “53rd Street Library” that is the supposed promised “replacement” for the former Donnell Library that once occupied the same site.

It’s telling that the NYPL which once reassuring promised that the “replacement” would bear the name Donnell has not dared to call the shrunken sunken library by the name of “Donnell.”

This page is video and picture gallery of the demonstration library defenders held for two hours today outside in protest while a PR oriented ceremony inside extolled the shrunken, sunken library as a shining example of what “private-public partnerships” can accomplish.

That ceremony was attended approvingly City Councilmen Jimmy Van Bramer and Andy King, heads respectively of the library committee and subcomittees of the City Council.  Mr. Van Bramer, in particular, is a strong proponent of other such library sales as well the next one in line being the sale, shrinking and sinking of the Brooklyn Heights closely modeled on this Donnell deal.

Notably, Mayor de Blasio who is being investigated for the “pay to play” aspects of the Brooklyn Heights library did not show up to be caught witnessing or extolling this example of what he wants to do by selling the Heights library, similarly a central destination library, the second biggest library in Brooklyn.  

To learn more about what the Donnell was, the luxury development it was sacrificed for and what’s happening in Brooklyn see:

    •    Monday, June 20, 2016, Images and Links- The 53rd Street "replacement " for the Donnell Library to be opened Monday and What We Lost

    •    Monday, June 20, 2016, As the Brooklyn Heights Central Library Gets Dismantled, the Business Career and Education Portion of It, Once Internationally Renowned For Its Resources, Dwindles To Hidden Away Room

    •    Monday, June 13, 2016, News Coverage of Love Brooklyn Libraries, Inc. Lawsuit Against Brooklyn Heights Library Sale

Here is the Facebook event post we did for the demonstration:

    •    Protest At Opening of Unacceptable “Replacement” for Donnell Library

Here is a link to a flikr album of just over 100 photos of the demonstration and event: "Where the Hell Is Donnell?".

Here is press coverage:

 •    New York Times: N.Y. / Region-An Amphitheater- A Laptop Bar. It's a New York Library Like No Other.- Building Blocks, By David W. Dunlap, June 20, 2016.

David Dunlap’s article includes this parenthetical quote alluding to an article that about the opening of Donnell that should be written . . .  

There is a Building Blocks column to be written about secretive plutocrats buying investment aeries in the sky while public institutions are relegated to basements. Some other day. 

 . . . and then it, sadly proceeds as if Dunlap, instead, felt compelled to write a good news, upbeat article not even pointing out how the NYPL daren't actually call this library "Donnell."

Nicole Gelinas's must read, beautifully articulate, article in the City Journal was the first article to appear presenting what Dunlap refered to as needing to be to be written . . .

•        City Journal: Books in the Basement- Midtown Manhattan's new library falls short of what a world-class city should provide to its citizens, by Nicole Gelinas, July 1, 2016.

. . . . In one of the worst decisions made by a local public institution in decades, the New York Public Library has squirreled away its newest branch in the basement of this luxury tower.

Also, filling in the gap Mr. Dunlap said needed to be filled is a New York Magazine review of the library written by Justin Davidson in his very finest form, hitting point after critical point: how “Neither architects nor librarians shaped this branch; a real-estate deal did, one that reserved the cream of the square footage for the hotel and condo above, and sloughed off the leftovers on the public” with “the people's book room  . .  shooed to the back of the line.”  He points out how the library is forced to wrap awkwardly “around the [luxury] tower's structural core” that looks “like a big concrete block in the middle of the room.”  (This is the same design sacrifice the proposed, not yet designed, replacement for the Brooklyn Heights Library faces.)

Waxing eloquent he describes how library patrons get “a rat's-eye view of the street and passers-by” and suggests that library users will have to “try elsewhere” if they have an interest in books, concluding with the observation that the NOT “especially comfortable” library fails to provides the “free experiences that are unique to a public library.”

Davidson mentions how in the central amphitheater suffering from “atrium-itis” a wide screen plays “a promotional slideshow for New York and its libraries” that has “enjoys a special kind of pointlessness.”

•        New York Magazine: The New 53rd Street Library Is Nice, Unless You Like to Read Books, by Justin Davidson, July 12, 2016.

Similarly, in his Vanishing New York Jeremiah Moss describes how in the amphitheater:

The people sitting on these steps are compelled to watch an unavoidably large video screen placed in front of them, where flashing scenes of New York City include several shots of luxury towers, built or under construction.

To watch people watching this, in a library that replaced a library that was destroyed so a luxury tower could rise, is to participate in a surreal nightmare of modern neoliberal urbanization.

Read the article for more including how the “The entire [new] library is bizarre” and about the people for whom the Donnell was torn down for expecting $64,000 restaurant dishes to give them “orgasms.”

•        Jeremiah's Vanishing New York: On Donnell's Replacement & $375 Cocktails, by Jeremiah Moss, July 13, 2016.

Here is more coverage.

    •    The Wall Street Journal: NY Real Estate Commercial-  Underground Library in Manhattan Rewrites Design Rules- West 53rd Street branch has smaller footprint, striking design, by Hannah Furfaro, June 29, 2016.

The Wall Street Journal article was too much "re-balanced" to excuse the NYPL, but included some of what needed to be said-

The new public library on West 53rd Street in Manhattan, with its towering glass facade, might be mistaken for a SoHo boutique, maybe even an Apple store. . . .

The 53rd Street Library, as it will be known, replaces the Donnell Library, which closed eight years ago.

Designed by principal architect Enrique Norten and his firm TEN Arquitectos, the library is a literary underworld. . .  "The big challenge for us was how to transform or negotiate what we have been calling a `topographic accident' in the city," said Mr. Norten, who referenced the difficulty of designing an almost entirely subterranean space.

. . . the Donnell library was 97,000 square feet, while the new space is 28,000 square feet.

While the new library’s smaller footprint has brought heartache for some. .

. .   Rita Bott, who worked as an information assistant at Donnell Library from 1968 until 1979, couldn't bear to go inside. "It's just a travesty that they have scaled this down and sold it off to a developer just so they could build this big tower," she said.

Some warned that the new branch could be a model for deals to come. "This idea that libraries can go underground, can be shrunk, that they don't have to be distinct civic buildings, is a concern to us," Charles Warren, an architect and president of the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, said on Tuesday.

. . . a few patrons could be heard whispering, "Where are all the books?"

    •    DNAInfo: 53rd Street Library Celebrates Reopening as Book Advocates Protest Outside, By Noah Hurowitz, June 27, 2016.

. . .  library advocates showed up Monday during he library's reopening to protest what they described as a capitulation to corporate interests, according to Michael White, of the Committee to Save the NYPL.

"Smaller libraries means less access to books, and if we can't access this knowledge through the library, it disappears," he said.

* * *

White was concerned that the combination of public space at the foot of a private tower had served as a prototype for the Brooklyn Heights Library deal, and would set a precedent for other development projects involving libraries.

"This deal was a model, and is part of what led to the Brooklyn Heights deal," White said, as he handed out signs to his compatriots.

In addition to the reduced space, the protesters were angry about the reduced number of physical books at the new library, which stands at about 20,000 [actually still coming?], according to NYPL spokeswoman Angela Montefinise, thousands fewer than the former library's collection [300,000+].

Judy Gorman sang her defending libraries song

City Councilman Andy King

NYPL president Tony Marx didn't stop to say his usual hello

CSNYPL president Charles Warren an organizer of the demonsration

Kids in the basement

Early AM, before anyone arrived

Here's Video (click through to CDL's YouTube channel for best viewing):

"Where The Hell Is Donnell"- Protest of 53rd St Library "replacement"



Judy Gorman's Library Song at Donnell Protest