January 23, 2006

Image courtesy New York Public Library

A steady stream of visitors has been transfixed by the restored Beaux Arts ceiling in the New York Public Library’s Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. Carrère and Hastings designed the two rooms and mezzanine that comprise the 7,000-square-foot space in 1911. It was closed for nine months while New York firm Davis Brody Bond completed the $5 million renovation, and reopened on December 15. The firm completed the library’s last major renovation. to its main reading room, in 1998.

Project architect Julia Doern focused on restoring the reading room’s finishes, which had been browned and dulled by pollution. The original twenty-foot-high ceiling’s extraordinary decorations included Dutch metal, an inexpensive finish sometimes substituted for gold leaf. The firm relied on the “artistry,” says Doern, of contractors to apply polychromed designs with red and green paint, befitting the original room. The ceiling was regilded and repainted based on the original ornamental work. The renovation also involved designing a new, larger reference desk, removing World War II-era black-out paint from windows, and restoring the red quarry floor tiles which had originally been imported from Wales.

Sarah Cox

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