Hudson Park Branch Library

66 Leroy Street | also 10 7th Avenue South | West Village | built 1906

Open on the map6 entries

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. 1906

    January 24

    The Hudson Park Branch opens as a Carnegie-funded library with 10,000 volumes

    Andrew Carnegie offered New York $5.2 million for branch libraries in 1901, and Carrere & Hastings began plans for the Leroy Street building in 1904. It cost $75,000 to build, and the site cost the city $44,000. The branch formally opened on January 24, 1906, and the Sun noted an auditorium and well-lit reading rooms. Neighbors had been coming in for a week to sign up for cards to borrow from its 10,000 volumes.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1906

    Carrere & Hastings give the Hudson Park Branch a Colonial Revival face with Federal details

    Carrere & Hastings, also the architects of the main library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, designed the branch in a classical manner that borrowed Italian Renaissance forms and New York Federal touches such as double keystones and fanlights. The John T. Brady Company built it. The building filled its lot and had a long side facing Hudson Park, which allowed more tall arched reading-room windows.

    “The builder for the Hudson Park branch was the John T. Brady Company…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1907

    November

    A settlement worker lectures on revolutionary Russia at the Hudson Park Branch

    In November 1907 Kellogg Durland, a settlement worker, spoke at the library about his travels through Russia. The New-York Tribune described the country as disturbed. Durland predicted that the revolutionary movement would finally succeed, and he faulted Tsar Nicholas II for having no plan to grant his people a constitutional government.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1911

    February 3

    Italian immigrant women hold a social evening at the Hudson Park Branch

    The Societa di Mutuo Beneficio fra le Donne Italiane, a mutual benefit society for Italian women, met at the library on February 3, 1911. The New York Public Library's annual report said the evening was social, with recitations in Italian, music and dancing. The library's 1911 report also noted that local boys had formed a self-governing Greenwich Village Literary Club there.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1921

    Poet Marianne Moore starts work as a library assistant at the Hudson Park Branch

    Marianne Moore worked as an assistant at the Hudson Park Branch from 1921 to 1925, when she was a young poet living in Greenwich Village. A plaque on the building commemorates her. The Landmarks Preservation Commission notes that this was the one New York Public Library branch serving the Village until the Jefferson Market Branch opened in 1967.

    “A plaque on the building commemorates poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972), who worked as an assistant at the library from 1921…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  6. 1934

    A Seventh Avenue South annex adds space to the Hudson Park Branch

    The extension of Seventh Avenue South to Varick Street, finished between 1914 and 1917, cleared buildings around the library and left odd lots behind its rear. In 1934 Brooklyn architect Raphael Glucroft designed an annex there with more reading rooms and shelf space and a second entrance on Seventh Avenue South. The original entrance stoop was removed and the main door lowered.

    “…in 1934 was expanded with the construction of an annex on one of the…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

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