New York Public Library Jackson Square Branch

251 West 13th Street | West Village | built 1887

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1888

    July 5

    The Jackson Square library opens on West 13th Street

    Architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the building as a branch of the Free Circulating Library, paid for by George W. Vanderbilt at a cost of $40,000. It was modeled on a Flemish guildhall, with a red-tiled roof behind a curved gable and wrought-iron strapwork on the red-brick facade. Trefoil decoration fills the blind arches around the windows.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1899

    Open shelves let readers at the Jackson Square library pick their own books

    In 1899 chief librarian J. Norris Wing introduced an open-shelf system, so readers could browse and check out books without waiting for a librarian to fetch them. It was tried at one branch, then two, and by August 1899 every library in the system, Jackson Square included, had adopted it. A 1904 account says the branch lent about 126,000 volumes a year and loaned opera scores for three days at a time.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1961

    Plans to convert Jefferson Market Courthouse into a library end the branch's run

    In 1961 plans were laid to restore the threatened Jefferson Market Courthouse and turn it into a library. That meant the end for the Jackson Square branch, which had served the neighborhood since 1888. Hunt's building then sat empty until 1967.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1967

    Artist Robert Delford Brown buys the empty library and Paul Rudolph reworks its interior

    Artist Robert Delford Brown bought the vacant library in 1967 for $125,000 as his home and the headquarters of his First National Church of the Exquisite Panic. Architect Paul Rudolph finished an interior renovation in 1970. The AIA Guide praised it for carving light-filled spaces from the old masonry rooms, though a New York Times writer called the results shocking.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1995

    Tom Fontana buys the building and has Paul Rudolph's interiors replaced

    Around 1995 television writer Tom Fontana bought the former library for just under $2 million. He hired architect Ron Bentley to redesign the interiors, which wiped out Paul Rudolph's work. Bentley made a single-family residence on the two upper floors, and Fontana's offices went into the lower two.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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