Empty of Everything but Hope
David W. Dunlap, the New York Times’ veteran Metro Reporter, considers the past, present and future of the landmark-designated Gould Memorial Hall at Bronx Community College. Widely regarded as architect Stanford White’s crowning achievement, the building is in critical need of repair and preservation. BBB is completing exterior restoration work on the Library, the first of many needed renovation projects at the building, including repairs to the dome’s cupola which features exterior copper shingles and Guastavino tiles.
“An Opulent Bronx Library in Decay, and in Search of a Purpose”
The New York Times
By David W. Dunlap
To reclaim Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College, Stanford White’s most dazzling extant structure in New York, its admirers must invent new uses for a building that was intended by a much different institution — New York University — to serve a now-antiquated form of scholarship, using riches of which the community college could only dream.
Under the chairmanship of Samuel G. White (Stanford’s great-grandson) and the day-to-day leadership of Michael Parley, a group called Save Gould Memorial Library will advise on the study of conditions in the largely empty, little-used 116-year-old building; help estimate what it would cost to repair and preserve it; and then set out to raise a sum that may need to be $50 million or more.
That’s a daunting task. In fact, it may be impossible. But it’s certainly worth trying…
