The Beaux-Arts Hall on Fifth Avenue Anyone Can Walk Into
Carrère and Hastings finished the marble building in 1911; the third floor keeps oak tables, brass lamps and two painted skies.
🏛️ Lions, murals and the 1911 oak
Two Vermont marble lions sit at the Fifth Avenue entrance, and the painted McGraw Rotunda sits one floor above the lobby. The Rose Main Reading Room spreads across fifty-two oak tables and 440 seats under ceiling murals restored to their 1911 colours. Entry is free and no reservation exists, so the Treasures exhibition on the first floor — a Gutenberg Bible, the original Winnie-the-Pooh animals, an early print of the Declaration — costs nothing either. Building tours leave the information desk at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., while Sundays open at 1 p.m.
