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New Bronx Library Center OpensThe New York Public Library held a dedication ceremony January 17 for a new, state-of-the-art, five-story central branch in the Bronx—a facility three times the size of the Fordham Library Center that had served the borough for 82 years. The $50-million, 78,000-square-foot Bronx Library Center, designed by Dattner Architects, offers 127 desktop computers for public use and houses 200,000 books, periodicals, and multimedia items for the community’s ethnically diverse users.“The Bronx Library Center represents the finest efforts of a team of talented NYPL staff members,” said Susan Kent, director and chief executive of NYPL’s branch libraries. “It offers the Bronx the best resources, services, technology, and information expertise available in libraries today.” The library features a Latino and Puerto Rican Cultural Center with 20,000 volumes of fiction and nonfiction in English and Spanish. The borough’s largest Center for Reading and Writing is also located in the library, which offers advanced assistive technologies for people with hearing and visual disabilities. The new building deploys energy-efficient exterior surfaces of glass and steel, photo sensors to lower the interior lighting in bright sun, and motion sensors to turn off unneeded lights. The January 16 New York Times noted that its insulated glass-curtain wall uses natural light to help heat the building and offers a panoramic view of the Bronx that includes the New York Botanical Garden, Fordham University, and the spans of the Whitestone Bridge over the East River. Two days of free music, dance and theater performances, storytelling, and tours were scheduled for January 21–22 to celebrate the library’s opening. Posted January 20, 2006. |
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