NYPL Will Build $50-Million New
Bronx Branch
With a commitment of $34 million from the city of New York and a $5-million gift from a trustee, the New York Public Library announced May 18 that it plans to build a new branch in the Bronx. The state will provide $1 million, and the library will come up with the remaining $10 million of the $50-million cost through fundraising.
The Bronx Borough Center Library will be NYPL’s largest branch in the Bronx, 47% of whose 1.2-million residents are of Latino origin. It will house NYPL’s new Latino and Puerto Rican Cultural Center and will include expanded Spanish-language collections.
Trustee Roger Hertog and his wife, Susan, have contributed $5 million to the project. Roger Hertog is vice-chairman of Alliance Capital Management; Susan Hertog is a journalist, photographer, and the author of a 1999 biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
The new branch will replace the Fordham Library Center, located a few blocks away and built in 1923. At 55,000 to 75,000 square feet, the new branch will have twice the space of the old. Construction is scheduled to start in the summer of 2002.
Posted May 28, 2001.
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