Free previewStop 2 of Rockefeller Center Christmas Walk: The Tree, the Windows and Fifth Avenue
Two Stone Lions and a Mayor's Advice
You're standing on Fifth Avenue at 41st Street, at the foot of the broad steps of the New York Public Library. New Yorkers just call it the 42nd Street Library. Before you go anywhere, look at the two marble lions lying on either side of the steps, one on the left, one on the right. They serve as the library's icon, and each has carried more than one name.
The building opened on May 23, 1911, a white marble palace raised on the site of the old Croton Reservoir. That reservoir didn't go quietly. Its walls were 25 feet thick. The library's trustees had picked the spot in 1896, partly because it sat between the two older collections they were merging, the Astor and the Lenox libraries. By the 1920s the new building was drawing four million visitors a year.
Those two collections gave the lions their first nicknames.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 2 of Rockefeller Center Christmas Walk: The Tree, the Windows and Fifth Avenue (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
