Mr. David continued: "The Library is not, then, intended to be a great monumental building, which would look almost as well from one point of view as another, and which would be fundamentally an example of pure architectural form. It is designed rather to face on the avenue of a city, and not to seem out of place on such a site. It is essentially and frankly an instance of street architecture; and as an instance of street architecture it is distinguished in its appearance rather than imposing. Not, indeed, that it is lacking in dignity. The façade on Fifth Avenue has poise, as well as distinction; character, as well as good manners. But still it does not insist upon its own peculiar importance, as every monumental building must do. It is content with a somewhat humbler rôle, but one which is probably more appropriate. It looks ingratiating rather than imposing, and that is probably one reason for its popularity. It is intended for popular rather than for official use, and the building issues to the people an invitation to enter rather than a command....
"The final judgment on the Library will be, consequently, that it is not a great monument, because considerations of architectural form have in several conspicuous instances been deliberately subordinated to the needs of the plan. In this respect it resembles the new Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The building is at bottom a compromise between two groups of partly antagonistic demands, and a compromise can hardly ever become a consummate example of architectural form. But, on the other hand, Messrs. Carrère and Hastings have, as in so many other cases, made their compromise successful. Faithful as they have been to the fundamental requirement of adapting the building to its purpose as a library, they have also succeeded in making it look well; and they have succeeded in making it look well partly because the design is appropriate to its function as a building in which books are stored, read and distributed. A merely monumental library always appears somewhat forbidding and remote. The Library looks attractive, and so far as a large building can, even intimate....
TERRACE IN FRONT OF LIBRARY
Looking South
By Edward C. Potter
"The popularity of the Library has, consequently, been well earned. The public has reason to like it, because it offers them a smiling countenance; and the welcome it gives is merely the outward and visible sign of an inward grace. When people enter they will find a building which has been ingeniously and carefully adapted to their use. Professional architects like it, because they recognize the skill, the good taste and the abundant resources of which the building, as a whole, is the result; and while many of them doubtless cherish a secret thought that they would have done it better, they are obliged to recognize that in order to have done it better they would have been obliged to exhibit a high degree of architectural intelligence. In the realism of its plan and in the mixture of dignity and distinction in the design, The New York Public Library is typical of that which is best in the contemporary American architectural movement; and New York is fortunate, indeed, that such a statement can be made of the most important public building erected in the city during several generations."
