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It’s one for the books.
The century-old Lynbrook Public Library on Long Island has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places thanks to its famed architect and fascinating history — most of it obscured over the years.
Everyday patrons and even some of the library’s seasoned workers may not know that the marvelous building was designed by Hugh Tallant, the same architect behind the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and that its 1929 inception is all thanks to the women’s suffrage movement.
They also may be surprised to learn that a disturbed worker-turned-robber destroyed its interior in an arson in the 1950s.
“I think [getting on the registry] will show the residents and everybody what a jewel they actually have in the Incorporated village,” library Director Robyn Gilloon told The Post. “You kind of pass it every day and don’t think about it.”
Gilloon said she is optimistic that the space — the only Long Island nominee out of 20 proposed in New York, including Marcus Garvey Park and the Church of St. Edward the Martyr, both in New York City — will be a shoo-in,
The library’s neoclassical exterior was the banner image used when Gov. Kathy Hochul announced her nominations in late March.
History kept quiet
Admittedly, Kathleen Curran, a decade-long Lynbrook reference librarian who spent four years on the library’s application, first learned almost all of the building’s rich nuggets during the process.
The mission to bring more literacy to Lynbrook before the library began in 1913, thanks to a local women’s suffrage movement called the Friday Club.
“They went from one storefront to another, and as they outgrew the space, they then decided to build this building,” Curran said.
The women recruited Tallant, who specialized in designing acoustically phenomenal city theaters such as BAM, the Lyceum Theatre and the New Amsterdam Theatre.
“You can still hear what he did when we have concerts here nowadays,” she said of the library with its 23-foot-high ceilings.
Tallant, who built Lynbrook’s architectural exclamation point at a time when city dwellers began calling Long Island home and when there was a push to fund libraries, incorporated a wealth of intentional imagery into its exterior.
“The lamp posts in the front are supposed to be symbolic of elevating people, enlightening people, as are the wide steps,” Curran said. “There’s a pediment sculpture of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, with her accompanying shield and snake.”
Book burning
The historical hit thrived throughout the 20th century until a custodian did the unthinkable in late 1956.
“He [deliberately] set fire to the curtains,” Curran said.
It was later revealed that the arsonist, local resident Charles H. Sharp, set the estimated $100,000 blaze — about $1,164,532.85 today — to cover his tracks after stealing $78 from the library’s main desk, according to Lynbrook Fire Department archival records. It was one of several fires Sharp set around Lynbrook’s business district that had caused $1 million in damages at the time, or an estimated $11.6M today.
On Thursday, Gilloon noticed for the first time a plaque commemorating that the space was “destroyed by fire” and was rebuilt on the inside a little over a year later, in 1957.
The building had another proverbial brush with death as the space was becoming outgrown in the mid-1980s.
“They were stepping over books. There really wasn’t space within the library,” Gilloon said. “The floors were questionable, whether they could hold the weight. … The original thought was they would move to a different building.”
But an adamant village administration and passionate locals ensured in 1992 that the space be expanded rather than shuttered. Since then, the mix of modern and classic style at the library has been a vital hub for students and townsfolk alike.
“What we do really is based on the core from way back in 1929,” Gilloon said.
“You want to serve the community, you want to help with literacy, you want to grow children’s reading, you want to serve as patrons from the time they’re born until the time they die.”
