Fifth Avenue, Patience and Fortitude on their plinths, the readers on the steps, the three arched portals, then Astor Hall: white Vermont marble under a vault, twin stair flights to the landings, bronze candelabra, the rotunda beyond.
Astor Hall is the marble entrance lobby of the New York Public Library at 476 Fifth Avenue, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Carrere and Hastings won the design competition in 1897 and the library opened on May 24, 1911. Busts of both architects stand in niches at the foot of the stairs that flank the hall. In November 1974 Astor Hall, the central stairs and the McGraw Rotunda became New York City's first interior landmark.
Source · NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, LP-2592 ↗
The Beaux Arts marble front with paired Corinthian columns between three round portals, the two marble lions flanking the broad steps, the vaulted white marble entrance hall with its lateral stair flights and bronze torcheres. Mood: fifth avenue, mid afternoon. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.