Writers File Lawsuit To Stop NYPL Renovation

In an effort to preserve the current state of the New York Public Library, a group of academics and writers have filed a lawsuit in the New York state Supreme Court to stop the planned renovation of the city’s iconic Fifth Avenue branch. The proposed Central Library Plan would result in the removal of the research stacks to make room for computer terminals and shelves of publicly circulating books, at the cost of $300 million. The plaintiffs, including Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Edmund Morris and historian David Nasaw, claim that the plan is in violation of the charter that established the branch as a research facility. Last month Morris warned that “those of us cognizant of what happened to civilization after the great library in Alexandria burned down can only think with trepidation of what the central plan is going to do to the historical memory of New York.”