Central Library Audio Tour: Third Floor

Episode Transcript

You are listening to the Brooklyn Public Library audio tour of the Central Library. I am Norman Erickson and I have been a librarian here at the Central Building for over 30 years. I have led tours of the buildings for patrons and staff for many, many years. Now we are bringing you a bit of that tour in a self-guided audio format. This part of the tour includes the Art & Music division, the Trustees Room, and the administrative areas, which are all located on the Third Floor. Feel free to walk around as you listen.

Now originally, the Art & Music space and the whole Third Floor was not a public area. Art and Music was originally our book ordering department, the cataloging department and our book processing departments. One of the biggest things in this department is the music. It's located on the outer walls of the division and the back end of the room. This is all music scores of all different formats and different types of instruments. We also have an orchestra collection that we loaned out to small orchestra groups that are not only in Brooklyn, but we mail it to groups around the country. Another fun thing that was in this department that no longer exists: at one point, you could borrow a piece of framed art to take it home. In the late 1980s, there were still a few of the framed artwork hanging on the walls, but we had stopped circulating them many years before. 

There's also the Musical Instrument Lending Library. This was one of one of the many of the Incubator projects that Brooklyn Public Library sponsors. An Incubator project is a program run by our Strategy department in which librarians come up with a concept, they pitch it to the department and some staff. If they like it, they give you some money. You get to go with it. It's a way for us to test things. The Music Instrument Lending Library has proved to be very, very popular. We do have a lot of stringed instruments violins, ukulele, guitars, both electric and acoustic, drum pads and some percussion instruments. Again, go onto our website and you'll find all the details on the Music instrument lending library.

There is a mural hanging on the wall here, just inside Art & Music that was a Works Project Administration mural that was originally hung in the WNYC radio offices in downtown Manhattan. It belongs to our neighbors next door, the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Now, what we're going to do is we're going to walk down this hallway here. Now, the corner here, we come to a junction. You have two restrooms on one side, and it goes down the curve. If I took that little curve to your left, you would come to the Adult Learning Center, also known as the Literacy Program. They've moved all over the building over the years. This is their space that they're in right now, which originally started out its life as a cafeteria.

So we're going to go to your right now and walk into another corridor. We have a glass wall here. Fun space, and you can stand here for hours watching everybody go by. Now, the door behind us is the Trustees Room. It is open for public use. We have programs and events there, but this is also where the Library's Board of Trustees meets. The room itself is the only place that still houses some of the original furniture. The blue leather chairs are scattered around the room or the original Trustees furniture. And the two large light fixtures hanging from the ceiling are the original Art Deco fixtures that were installed in 1941.

If you look through those windows, you will look out and see Grand Army Plaza. This room, as well as the office of the President and CEO, has been used in many TV series. You probably will look around you, like, wait a minute. I've seen that somewhere, where was that? Madam Secretary, Billions, The Good Wife. The Americans, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Looming Towers. These are a number of the shows that were using this space.

Also off the Trustees Room is a door that you'll see to your right and that has a vault in there. In that vault are the archival collections of the Brooklyn Public Library as an institution, as well as some of our rare book collection, and The Hunt Collection. The Hunt Collection is an unusual collection of 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century children's books. It was put together by a librarian named Clara Hunt. Ms. Hunt helped create the first library for children in Brooklyn, which is now a Brownsville branch. She built this collection of materials, and it is accessible to scholars.

Now, as we exit the Trustees Room, we're going to continue down the corridor. This is our administrative offices. Our Government Affairs office, which you can see through the doorway, looking into the administrative offices, that originally was the library switchboard and the record storage area. These offices are closed to the public.

Now we're going to go a little to our left here and we're going to walk down a little corridor, and we're going to stand in front of the elevators. The door behind us leads into what is now the office of the Brooklyn Public Library President and CEO. There's a fireplace in here, a beautiful view of Grand Army Plaza, and there's a full bathroom in there with a shower. And those fixtures are still there, as of 2022. These areas are not open to the public, but they are beautiful set of rooms.

Now, we are standing still at the two elevators. Just push the button and we can go back down to the first floor. And you've completed your tour. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you. 

This is the end of BPL's Central Audio Tour. If you missed any of the stops, you can navigate to our web page and find all six there. 

This tour was narrated by Norman Eriksen, and conceived by Norman Eriksen and LaCresha Neal. It was produced by Virginia Marshall, LaCresha Neal, Jennifer Proffitt, and Laurie Elvove, with help from Natiba Guy-Clement, Brynna Ververs, Caroline Hartman, and Mary Dickson.