Trendy Manhattan: Libraries in Residential Buildings

Buildings with Libraries: A Soft-Spoken Amenity. (The New York Times, 4/6/2012)

Excerpt:   When Martin Semjen first looked at the Stanton, a co-op at Broadway and 94th Street, he was delighted by the sauna and fitness room. His wife, Lynn Schnurnberger, on the other hand, fell hard for an unpretentious basement library that doubles as a meeting room and is lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling wood bookcases.

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In the highly competitive New York marketplace, where developers of residential buildings seem to be engaged in an amenities arms race — cold storage, wine cellar, gym, pool, hot tub, children’s playroom, ’tween playroom, party room — the library is a low-cost frill. “You don’t need a lot of space to create a small reading room. It can be carved out of the lobby,” said Kathy Braddock, an owner of Rutenberg Realty.

And even though in this age of eBooks a library can seem like an anachronism, some of New York’s glossiest and highest profile new developments boast of having one.