Landmarks Preservation Commission January 30, 2001, Designation List 323 LP-2060 New York Public Library, Muhlenberg Branch, 209-211 West Street, Manhattan. Built 23rd 1906. Carrere & Hastings, architects. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 773, Lot 38 On March 28, 2000, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of The New York Public Library, Muhlenberg Branch, and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 1). The hearing was duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Four witnesses spoke in support of the designation including a representative of the library, two members of the Muhlenberg Library Association, and a representative of the Historic Districts Council. The Landmarks Preservation Commission received a statement of support from Council member Christine Quinn and a letter of support from Community Board 4; there were no speakers in opposition. Summary Opened on February 19, 1906, the neo Classical Muhlenberg Branch was the eleventh Carnegie branch built in Manhattan and the twenty-eighth of sixty-seven branch libraries built in New York City, with Andrew Carnegie's 1901 donation of $5.2 million to establish a city wide system. The distinguished and prolific architectural firm of Carrere & Hastings designed the Muhlenberg Branch as well thirteen other Carnegie branch libraries and the Main Building of The New York Public Library. The library building is characteristic of the urban Carnegie library type. It features a vertical plan · and arched entrance offset to one side, tall, arched and rectangular windows providing abundant lighting, classically-inspired style, and carved stone ornament. The library has played a prominent role in Chelsea's social and civic life for nearly one hundred years.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS History of Chelsea 1 early twentieth centuries. The neighborhood population The Chelsea neighborhood's boundaries consist of peaked at 85,000 in 1900. West 14tl' Street on the south, West 30tl1 Street on the Late nineteenth century Chelsea was a diverse north, Sixth A venue on the east and the Hudson River neighborhood. Industrial development, prohibited in on the west. In 17 50 Thomas Clarke, a retired British the Chelsea division, grew along the shores of the Army captain, bought the Somerindyck farm, which Hudson River, centered on the busy piers. Tenements stretched from 21st to 24tl1 Streets and from Eighth were built to house the workers. The Chelsea Hotel, A venue (just west of the library site) to the Hudson across from the library site, was built in 1885 as the River, which was then at today's Tenth Avenue. He Chelsea Apartment, one of the first cooperative named the area Chelsea, after a soldiers' hospital near apartment houses. Several movie studios moved into the London. His daughter Charity Clarke Moore and her area in the early twentieth century. Mary Pickford's husband Benjamin extended the farm south to 19tl1 first films were made in a studio on West 26tl1 Street Street. The Clarke Moore family vigorously opposed and the Reliance and Majestic Studios were located on the street grids called for in the Commissioners' Plan of West 21st Street. 1811. In 1813, however, they deeded the farm to their In 1930 London Terrace, a large apartment son, Clement Clarke Moore, and by the 1830s he was complex on 23'd Street between Ninth and Tenth developing the area as a residential neighborhood A venues, replaced dozens of nineteenth century row opening streets, leveling and grading the land. Clement houses. A number of public housing projects were built Clarke Moore, is best known as the author of "A Visit to the north of 23'd Street from the 1930s to the 1950s. from St. Nicholas."2 He donated the site for the The historic neighborhood was rediscovered in the General Theological Seminary in 1825 and became its 1960s, designated a New York City Historic District in first professor of Greek,

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