Ada Louise Huxtable, the prominent architecture critic, has come out against the New York Public Library's controversial plan to renovate its flagship Fifth Avenue library.
With a design by the British architect Norman Foster of Foster + Partners, the library plans to remove most of the books to make room for a circulating library inside the existing reference center. Scholars and others have protested plans to send the books to storage, concerned that delays in retrieving books are likely to result, and that the changes would diminish the library's research role.
“This is a plan devised out of a profound ignorance of or willful disregard for not only the library's original concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and compromising its historical and architectural integrity,†Ms. Huxtable wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “You don't ‘update' a masterpiece.â€
As an alternative, Ms. Huxtable, who formerly wrote for The New York Times, proposed that the library renovate the existing Mid-Manhattan library, rather than sell it. “Let Foster+Partners loose on the Mid-Manhattan building,†she said, “the results will be spectacular, and probably no more costly than the extravagant and destructive plan the library has chosen.â€
