New York Public Library reading room

The Rose Main Reading Room, New York Public Library, USA

Today we’re inside the Rose Main Reading Room, which is part of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building – commonly known as the New York Public Library – on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan. The rectangular room is almost the length of a football field and first opened to the public with the rest of the library in 1911. The building is one of the greatest examples of Beaux-Arts style architecture in the United States and has become a major New York landmark. It has featured in many films, including 'Breakfast at Tiffany's', 'Ghostbusters' and 'Spider-Man'. The Rose Main Reading Room, which is located on the third floor of the building, closed for renovation in May 2014 after an ornamental plaster rosette fell from its 16-metre-high ceiling and crashed to the floor. The room reopened just over two years later.