Skating on Top of the Books

You're standing in Bryant Park, the green rectangle between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 40th to 42nd Street. Look east, toward Fifth. That grand stone back wall and raised terrace belong to the New York Public Library's main building. Now look down at the ground in front of you, the lawn where people skate in winter. Under the western half of this park, the lawn, the walkways, the carousel, are the library's books.

That's not a figure of speech. The western half sits entirely over an underground structure that houses the library's stacks. To understand how the books ended up down there, you need to know how far this park had fallen.

This ground has been a graveyard. From 1823 to 1840 it was a potter's field, a burial place for the city's poor, until thousands of bodies were moved to Wards Island. In July 1863 the New York draft riots reached this square, and the Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street was burned down.

Later the park was rebuilt in 1933 and 1934, and then went into decline again. In 1980 a private nonprofit, the Bryant Park Corporation, was founded, and it led the restoration. The city's Parks Department still owns the land, but the corporation manages it.

Then came the idea that tied everything together. Between 1988 and 1992 the park was rebuilt by landscape architects Hanna/Olin and architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, and while it was torn up, the library's stacks were built underneath. A struggling park and one of the world's great libraries were fixed in the same dig, with the lawn on top of the books.

People now cite Bryant Park as a model of public-private partnership. The park says more than 12 million people a year visit.

And in winter the park hosts its Winter Village, with an ice rink and shops. So when you watch someone wobble across the ice, think about the books kept in the dark beneath this half of the park, row after row, perfectly still.

When you're ready, walk southwest, about seven minutes and 470 meters, to the library's two stone lions, and see what you make of them.