The Public Theater

The building you are approaching began its life as the Astor Library, commissioned by the wealthy patriarch John Jacob Astor to provide the people of New York with their first free public research library. When it opened in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a massive, stoic repository of knowledge that prohibited any books from being checked out, insisting that all reading happen within its halls. The structure itself was built in three distinct stages, with every expansion meticulously designed to match the original architecture so perfectly that the final, unified building appears to have been constructed all at once.