Edmund Morris on NYPL’s Stacks Study

Last week, the New York Times reported on NYPL’s decision to keep the stacks at the 42nd Street Library empty indefinitely. In a letter to the editors published just before his passing, our friend Edmund Morris offers a brief comment on this sad state of affairs:

 To the Editor:

The Times has done New York and its visitors a service in publicizing one of the city’s most unappreciated spectacles: the New York Public Library’s continuing exhibition of internal air (“Why the New York Public Library Has 7 Floors of Stacks With No Books,” news article, May 21).

Qualified personnel are doubtless on hand to lead tours of the building’s magnificent core of Carnegie steel, which for more than a century was obscured by a musty collection of printed works. Much of that resource is now conveniently stored “off site,” which I believe is a synonym for New Jersey.

Edmund Morris
Kent, Conn.