A Nook for Books, Underground

by: Corey Kilgannon

THEY call it the commuters’ secret, these denizens of the Terence Cardinal Cooke-Cathedral branch of the New York Public Library. It is located down a flight of stairs, just outside the turnstile entrance to the No. 6 train on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 50th Street. The door is next to a MetroCard machine. There is no street-level sign announcing its existence.

“If you don’t take the train, you’d probably never even know this place exists,” said Eric Velasquez, 47, who commutes from the Parkchester section of the Bronx to an administrative job at a Midtown bank and stops by frequently. But the location is also a plus. “It’s second nature to return the book,” Mr. Velasquez said, “because you can’t help but pass the library every morning and evening when you’re getting the train.”

Then there are the people who assume the library is an outpost of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “They come in asking for help with the MetroCard machine,” said Anisha Huffman, the branch manager. “We do help them if we’re not too busy, and they also ask us for subway maps, so we keep a lot of them on hand.”

Before the branch opened in 1992, the space housed a library, dating to 1887, for the Archdiocese of New York.

At 2,100 square feet, it is the second smallest of the 90 branches in the New York system, which covers Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island (the Macombs Bridge Library in the Harlem River Houses is 700 square feet). It has little space for desktop computers, so there are 13 laptops. But the Cooke branch has the circulation activity of a much bigger library, officials said.

Ms. Huffman, who commutes on the No. 6 from Upper Manhattan, said the patron pool seemed to reflect the ridership of a typical downtown train in Manhattan: an extreme diversity of ethnicity, wealth, education and occupation. You have the rich and the poor, the soiled and the well scrubbed, all pushed together. The branch also sees tourists from Midtown hotels who check e-mail, print airplane tickets and ask touristy questions.

“It’s funny,” said Alvin Tulshi, a clerk at the library. “One question we get regularly is ‘Where’s the Barnes & Noble?’ ”

When the branch is packed at lunch, one can almost picture the place swaying between stops. Like subway riders, the patrons keep their heads down, focused on their own business, but they don’t brook much nonsense.

“Hey, can you keep it down — some people are trying to concentrate,” one patron barked at a reporter who was chatting with library employees and users. Others grunted support without looking up.

The mix of material is tailored to commuters: a decent selection of business books and lots of page-turning novels.

“Mostly, patrons don’t come here for serious research,” Ms. Huffman said. “A lot of them are looking to head home with books for their children or looking for leisure books.”

Melissa Britt, 48, who manages a messenger service nearby, said she enjoyed the clubbiness of the branch.

“You see the same people all the time,” Ms. Britt said. “You can’t find this place unless someone tells you about it.”

from: NY Times