The West 135th Street Branch Library (Schomburg Collection) - 103 West 135th Street

Ivy trailed over the facade in 2009.  photograph by McMillin24

On March 12, 1901, Andrew Carnegie offered the City of New York a gift of $5,202,261 (about $192 million in 2024) to build free circulating libraries. The condition was that the city would provide the land and maintain the libraries.  An agreement was reached and the plans for fifty libraries throughout the five boroughs were begun.  

The firm of McKim, Mead & White received the commission for the West 135th Street Branch.  Principal Charles McKim and William Kendall took the reins in designing a sedate, neo-Classical structure faced in white limestone.  Three stories tall, it sat upon a rusticated base.  Double-height pilasters separated the upper bays.  A dramatic Palladian window dominated the second floor, its third-floor fanlight was ornamented with an elaborate wrought-iron grill.  McKim and Kendall finished the design with a deeply overhanging cornice.

Theodore Wesley Koch, in his 1917 A Book of Carnegie Libraries, noted, "The branch of 103 West 135th Street is a departure architecturally from most of the Carnegie buildings, inasmuch as it has an overhanging tile roof and a large arched central window in front running from the second to the third story."  

The deed to the property, according to Koch, provided, "that a strip of land 10 feet wide should be left free" on both sides.  The result was light and ventilation on all four sides of the building.  The architects took advantage of the western strip to provide an outside entrance to the basement assembly room.  The ground floor held the adult circulating and reference department, the second was the "children's room," and the third floor held the periodical room and janitor's apartments.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Harlem neighborhood around the library was composed mostly of middle-class and upper-middle-class Jewish families.  They utilized the routine functions of a branch library, while enjoying programs and activities within the basement assembly room.  On November 3, 1906, for instance, The School Journal announced that Dr. J. H. Canfield of Columbia University would be giving a series of eight lectures on "The History of Civilization" on Tuesday evenings.

At the time of Dr. Canfield's lectures, the demographics of Harlem had begun to change.  In 1904, subway service was extended northward, making the district more accessible.  The increasing influx of blacks ignited white panic among some residents, like Irish-born retired police officer John G. Taylor, who moved to West 136th Street in 1903.  In 1910, according to Mike Wallace in his Greater Gotham, A History of New York City From 1898 to 1919, Taylor "opposed allowing blacks to use the New York Public Library branch at 103 West 135th Street."  (A panicked Taylor, writes Wallace, "advocated building a 24-foot-high wall along West 136th Street to keep blacks from moving north.")

Noticeably not racist were the inclusive policies of the West 135th Street Branch.  Black faces would have been among the audiences at the January 1912 lecture on "Cowboy and Engineer in Colorado" by Graham C. Hunter, and Mrs. Emma P. Telford's talk on "Arizona: the Cradle and the Wonderland of the New York" later that month.

Gradually, the library became an integral part in the developing black community.  On September 17, 1914, for instance, The New York Age reported, "The Negro Civic Improvement League plans to organize its first neighborhood Association in Harlem at a meeting to be held in the Library, assembly room, 103 West 135th street, on Friday evening, September 18, at 8.15 o'clock."

In pre-air conditioning days, the second floor windows are opened wide.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1917, the assembly room was the regular meeting space for what the Young Men's Christian Association termed the "Colored Men's Branch" while its new building at 179-183 West 135th Street was being constructed.  The "Big Meetings" were held here every Sunday.  Dr. Adam Clayton Powell addressed the assembly on April 29 that year.

The themes of the lectures reflected the issues important to the locals.  On October 14, 1917, Dr. Mason Pitman, superintendent of the Colored Orphan Asylum gave a lecture on "The Colored Orphan," and Captain Charles W. Fillmore spoke on "The Negro as Soldier."

A letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune published on September 6, 1921 foreshadowed things to come.  It began:

Sir:  Readers of The Tribune will be interested in knowing that there is on exhibition at the New York Public Library, 103 West 135th Street, a unique collection of negro works of art.  Among the pieces displayed are paintings, drawings, etchings and work in sculpture.  There are also some rare books produced by negroes during the days of American slavery, and others of historic and racial value written by black men of America and other countries.

The cover of the 1921 catalog.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The exhibition came from the collection of George Young, who ran a bookshop at 135 West 135th Street.  In its October 1922 issue, the Fisk University News said, "Young's Book Exchange contains the largest collection of books by and about the negro race that has been assembled anywhere and which is open to the public."  The article said, "From the beginnings six years ago with six books, Mr. Young's collection has grown to 8,00 to 10,000 books by and pertaining to negroes.  Some of the rarest copies of first editions are there, for Mr. Young has had exceptional opportunities for collecting."

The article said, "Miss Ernestine Rose, the librarian, and Augustus Dill have arranged an exhibit to show the colored people of the neighborhood, and the white people, what the negro has accomplished." Its success was such that the showing became an annual event.

Like George Young, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg was an avid collector of black history.  Born in Puerto Rico, Schomburg arrived in New York in 1891 at the age of 17.  He obtained a job with the Bankers Trust Company where he stayed for two decades.  According to his biographer, Elinor Des Verney Sinnette, his passion for collecting black history stemmed from his fifth-grade teacher's offhanded remark, "Black people have no history, no heroes, no great moments."  

Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, from the collection of the New York Public Library

Shelley Fisher Fishkin writes in her Writing America--Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee:

On May 19, 1926, more than a hundred packing crates were delivered to the central building of the New York Public Library to be prepared for shipment to their final destination: the 135th Street branch of the library, where thousands of books, manuscripts, etchings, portraits, and pamphlets would be made available to the public the following January.

The crates contained the accumulated collection of Arthur A. Schomburg.  On January 14, 1927, a private viewing was held of the Schomburg Collection prior to its official opening.  Arthur Schomburg would be appointed curator of the Negro Division of Literature, History, and Prints in 1930.

Although now the greatest repository of black history in the nation, the 135th Street Branch library continued its regular programs.  On July 16, 1932, The New York Age reported that the staff, "cordially invites the summer students and their friends to their annual reception and dance, to be held in the auditorium of the library."  

The branch operated a Book Club and speakers regularly appeared at its meetings.  On May 19, 1933, for instance, Alain Locke of Howard University spoke on "Contemporary Drama and Negro Life" and Dr. Charles Augustin Petioni discussed, "The American Negro Colonist in the West Indies."  The New York Age mentioned that the latter was the "second of a series of lectures especially planned and promoted by A. A. Schomberg [sic]."

During the Depression years, the Federal Works Project funded the American Negro Theater, which was based here.  Called "the Library Theatre," on July 6, 1940, The New York Age called it, "the ideal place for a summer theatre and in the heart of Harlem."  On May 30, 1942, the newspaper announced the upcoming opening of Starlight.  Included in the cast was "Ruby Wallace Dee."  A month later, the newspaper called her "the greatest find of 1942."

The New York Age was correct.  The following year, Ruby Dee made her Broadway debut in South Pacific.  She would go on to win an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, and an Academy Award nomination, among many other honors.

The Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library became central to Harlem community activities.  On July 18, 1959, the New York Age reported on a new exhibition "commemorating the 50th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" here.

The aging building was in need of maintenance in August 1968 when Black World/Negro Digest reported that the city had set aside $54,000 "for an engineering survey of the old Harlem building to house endangered Schomburg Collection."  At the same time, the state had allotted $80,000 "to aid its manuscript preservation campaign."  The Board of Estimates anticipated that "an additional $966,600 would be forthcoming to reconstruct the library building."

In 1974, a series of buildings were vacated in preparation for groundbreaking for a new building for the Schomburg Collection, including a tenement next door.  The ten-foot space between the structures set forth in the 1904 deed proved fortuitous.  On April 9, The New York Times wrote, "Smoke filled the reading room of the Schomburg collection of Negro History and Literature last week as a fire set in an empty tenement next door threatened the irreplaceable collection of memorabilia, art, history and literature housed in the old library building."  It was the most recent of several arson fires in the neighborhood.  "Several weeks ago a custodian spent the night wetting down the sides of the library...as sparks from a burning tenement at 108 West 135th Street licked the side of the Schomburg."

The new building, the Countee Cullen Library branch, was opened in 1980.  Seven years later, in August 1987, Howard Dodson, chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, escorted a New York Times reporter through the still vacant McKim, Mead & White building.  The landmark building was undergoing a $3.4 million restoration project.

He reminisced, "how Alex Haley researched 'Roots' there; how James Baldwin in the heyday of his Harlem youth discovered literature there; how Kenneth Clark studied there; how such entertainers as Harry Belafonte and Ossie Davis trained there," said the article.

image via marblefairbanks.com

The project resulted in a gift shop and exhibition hall, and the restoration of the American Negro Theatre space.