The Gould Memorial Library (GML; also nicknamed Gould) is a building on the campus of Bronx Community College (BCC), an institution of the City University of New York (CUNY), in University Heights, Bronx, New York City, United States. The building was designed by Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White. Constructed between 1895 and 1900 as the central library of New York University's (NYU) Bronx campus, it was part of the New York University Libraries system. The library is named after railroad magnate Jay Gould, whose daughter Helen Miller Shepard funded the project in his memory. Gould is no longer used as a library, instead serving primarily as an event space. Gould's facade and interior are New York City designated landmarks, and it is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Gould is arranged in the shape of a Greek cross and is surrounded by the Hall of Fame for Great Americans to its west. The library's main entrance is on the east side, where there is a portico with a Corinthian-style colonnade. The copper dome contains an ornamental frieze as well as an oculus at its center. Inside the entrance vestibule, a barrel-vaulted stair hall leads up to offices and a circular reading room. The ornately designed reading room contains two colonnades flanking two balcony levels; multiple Tiffany glass windows; a balustrade with sixteen statues; and a coffered ceiling. Originally, the reading room was surrounded by three levels of stacks and 18 seminar rooms. Under the library was a 600-seat auditorium.
New York University's Bronx campus was developed in the 1890s. Construction on the library started in 1895 after Shepard anonymously donated $200,000. During much of the 20th century, NYU used the library for commencement ceremonies and other events. The university installed numerous busts of artists inside the library during the 1920s and 1930s. NYU built additional campus libraries in the 1950s due to a lack of space at Gould, and the auditorium was rebuilt after an arson attack in 1969. After NYU sold its Bronx campus to CUNY in 1973, the Gould Library was converted into an event space, and the library fell into disrepair. The auditorium was restored in 2000, and the library was further refurbished in the early 21st century.
Site The Gould Memorial Library is on a high plateau in the University Heights neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. The plateau is above sea level and overlooks the Harlem River immediately to the west. When Gould was built, the plateau had views of the Palisades to the west, Spuyten Duyvil to the north, Long Island to the east, and the South Bronx to the south. The modern site overlooks the Major Deegan Expressway, the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line, and the Harlem River to the west. Gould was originally part of New York University's (NYU) campus. Since 1973, Gould has been part of Bronx Community College (BCC), operated by the City University of New York (CUNY). The library occupies a land lot whose official address is 1930 Sedgwick Avenue.
The library is flanked by the Hall of Languages to the south and the Hall of Philosophy to the north. The three buildings are placed at the top of the plateau. The building is about above Sedgwick Avenue, which runs directly to the west. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans runs to the west of the Gould Memorial Library, Hall of Languages, and Hall of Philosophy. The Hall of Fame, composed of a stone colonnade as well as a brick walkway, contains bronze portrait busts of prominent Americans. The Hall of Fame was designed to conceal the Gould Memorial Library's foundation. The portion of the colonnade next to the library is circular in plan. West of the Hall of Fame is a fountain facing Sedgwick Avenue. To the east, a promenade cuts across BCC's quad. The promenade originally extended to Ohio Field, but a student center was built between the library and Ohio Field in 1953.
Architecture The Gould Memorial Library was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White and was built between 1895 and 1898 as part of the New York University Libraries system. It was the centerpiece of NYU's Bronx campus. Since 1973, it has been part of the BCC campus. Gould no longer serves as the campus library; it has been superseded by the Bronx Community College Library, which opened in 2012.
Form and facade The library is shaped like a Greek cross; this layout was also used for the Low Memorial Library, designed by White's colleague Charles Follen McKim. It measures four bays wide on each elevation. The corners of the building contain notches. To the north, west, and south are wings with pediments, each of which measures one bay deep and four bays across. The eastern elevation, facing the rest of the BCC campus, contains a portico with Corinthian columns. Each of the six columns in the portico is made of Indiana sandstone.
The library, as well as the adjacent buildings, are clad with buff brick and limestone trim. Pink granite and soft-red copper were also used in the building's construction. The main entrance to the library is underneath the portico to the east. It contains bronze entrance doors, which were designed in 1921 and sculpted by White's son, Lawrence Grant White. The doors, consisting of eight relief panels, were designed by six sculptors who had worked with Stanford White. The remaining three elevations are made of Roman red brick, framed with pilasters made of limestone. The brick walls contain windows. Each of the windows is flanked by molded jambs and topped by entablatures. Above the building is a Composite-style cornice with antefixes.
The top of the library contains a circular drum, above which is a saucer dome with an oculus at its center. There is also a composite frieze on the dome, decorated with garlands and pendants. The dome is covered with copper tiles. The lower section of the dome is divided into several stepped tiers. Surrounding the oculus are decorations such as antefixes. Several authors have likened the arrangement of the building, with its dome and porticoes, to the University of Virginia's Rotunda.
Interior
Vestibule and stairs
Just inside the doors is a vestibule with bronze lamps on either side. The vestibule is decorated with stained-glass windows; a mosaic floor with red, yellow, white and black tiles; and a domed ceiling. There is a revolving door just inside the vestibule, which leads to a landing with a mosaic floor and wooden office doors. The side walls contain barrel-vaulted staircases descending to the basement. One of these staircases led to the auditorium. This stairway contained six marble panels with the inscription "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom" in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, English, and German.
A main staircase with 24 Tennessee marble steps ascends from the lower landing to the reading room. The main staircase is placed inside a stair hall with a barrel-vaulted, coffered ceiling. The design of the main staircase was inspired by a sketch that White had created in his youth. Inspiration was also derived from the Golden Staircase in the Doge's Palace and the Scala Regia in the Apostolic Palace. The staircase was designed to resemble an ascent toward knowledge, as the domed reading room could not be seen until a visitor reached the top of the staircase. Each of the steps is wide. The walls of the stair hall are clad with Portland stone to about two-thirds of the stair hall's height. A frieze with a scroll pattern, as well as pale-yellow panels of marble, runs atop the Portland-stone section of the wall. Each wall contains two stone pilasters, one near the bottom of the staircase and one near the top. There are bronze torchères attached to both sets of pilasters, above which are glass orbs providing illumination to the stairway. The top of each wall contains an entablature, above which rises the ceiling.
The top of the stair hall contains an upper landing with a domed ceiling, similar in design to the lower landing. A green roundel of Tiffany glass is placed within the middle of the dome, and a glass lighting orb is suspended from this roundel. The walls of the upper landing are similar to those in the stair hall: Portland stone on the lower two-thirds of the wall and pale-yellow marble panels above. Directly in front of the stair hall is a doorway with an eared frame and a triangular pediment, which leads directly into the reading room. In addition, each side wall contains doorways to NYU's former administrative offices. The librarian's room is to the left while the chancellor's room is to the right. Above all these doorways are lunette openings with niches, each of which is large enough to fit a bust.
Reading room
The circular reading room was designed as the centerpiece of the library and was surrounded by three levels of stacks. The outer wall of the reading room contains a colonnade of 16 triple-height engaged and fluted Corinthian columns. It is aligned with an inner colonnade of freestanding green Connemara marble columns. The colonnades flank a passageway with a floor of white, black, and yellow marble tiles; the passageway measures about wide. A skylight in the middle of the ground floor, measuring across, illuminates the former auditorium in the basement. There are three balconies immediately above the passageway. The second-level balcony has an iron frame and a glass floor. The third-level balcony was decorated more ornately. Above the colonnades is a fourth-level balcony and the dome.
First to third levels On the reading room's north, west, and south walls were alcoves with stacks, as well as doorways leading to seminar rooms and staircases. Each of the alcoves contained three tiers of stacks, each measuring tall. The alcoves were all divided vertically into three bays. On the first level, the outer bays of each alcove contained bookcases, while the central bay contained a swinging bookcase that doubled as a doorway. The names of academics and other intellectual figures are inscribed onto the walls of the reading room, above and below the bookcases. The second and third levels contained iron bookcases, gilded doors, and inscriptions similar to those on the first level. Above the stacks on the third level are red, green, and blue Tiffany glass panels.
The reading room's entrance was flanked by card catalog desks. The loan desk was in the second alcove, counting clockwise from the main entrance (on the patron's left when they entered). The loan desk contained an inscription of a Latin phrase. White designed furniture for the reading room, which is no longer extant. The furniture was designed for a practical purpose; for example, the legs of the chairs and tables had rubber tips to prevent screeching. The center of the room contained a circular table surrounded by twenty-four seats. Radiating from the center were eight long and eight short tables; the short tables seated four people, and the long tables seated eight people. This gave the reading room a seating capacity of 120.
The Connemara-marble inner colonnade surrounds the central section of the reading room, which is across. Each of the columns has a diameter of . Between each set of columns were glazed cases for large books or portfolios. The columns were constructed in six sections and are placed atop white Vermont-marble pedestals. The tops of the columns have metal Corinthian capitals, painted by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Co. in a gold color. These columns support an entablature and a balcony. The entablature contains a frieze with an inscription in all capital letters, which is derived from book 1 of John Milton's poem Paradise Lost. There is an architrave with Greek frets beneath the inscription, as well as a cornice with brackets above.
Fourth level and dome