360° Virtual Tour of the New York Public Library

The New York Public Library was the largest marble building ever built in the U.S. when it opened in 1911, using 530,000 cubic feet of marble.

The Main Reading Room is a majestic public space, measuring seventy-eight feet by two hundred and ninety-seven feet — roughly the length of two city blocks — and weaving together Old World architectural elegance with modern technology. The award-wining restoration of this room was completed in 1998.

Here, patrons can read or study at long oak tables lit by elegant bronze lamps, beneath fifty-two foot tall ceilings decorated by dramatic murals of vibrant skies and billowing clouds

The walls in the McGraw Rotunda are decorated with murals depicting the evolution of the printed word. Here, you can see Moses bringing the tablets down from the mountain. Another depicts the Gutenberg Press. Visitors can view one of the rare Gutenberg Bibles in the Edna Barnes Solomon Exhibition Room adjoining the rotunda.

Astor Hall, at the entrance, with its unique stone vault above an awesome white marble interior, sets the tone for the architectural delights that lie in store for the visitor. Sumptuous light brackets, elaborately decorated ceilings, the great gallery extending along the north-south axis of the building on the first floor, the window bays, the doorways, the great stairways, all combine to lift the human spirit and dignify man’s achievements. The elaborately decorated Main Reading Room, almost two city blocks in length, located at the top of the building for light and quiet, is a fitting climax to all that the architects wished to achieve.