Carrie Bradshaw was in love with the Brooklyn Bridge, and I have a similar love affair with the New York Public Library.  I think it is possibly the most fantastic space in Manhattan.  I have no idea why the noisy Starbucks in the city are so crowded with kids with laptops and textbooks when where is the 42nd St Research Center Library (technically, it’s called the “Humanities and Social Science Research Library”), with oak and mahogany tables and free wireless in various reading rooms and studies.

The Rose Reading Room, however, is my most productive work space in Manhattan; it’s the biggest room in the library and it looks straight out of a palace.  It has carved ceilings and rows and rows of books and encylopedias, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.  Although there is no wireless for laptops in that room, I think it has fantastic creative energy, especially for me personally, because Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in the Rose Reading Room, and just I love-Love-LOVE her.  

I have a deep emotional connection to the library, too.  When I made the terrible mistake last year of transferring to SUNY Stony Brook for a semester, I would stay with my friends in the city for the weekends, hanging out with them by night and working on my book in the library by day.  It’s such a comforting place for me, to go and sit in silence and write.

It sounds like a no-brainer, but I know so many New Yorkers who have never been inside the 42nd Street library!  I would definitely recommend checking it out, if for no other reason, to say Hi to the stone lions outside, to see the beautiful paintings on the walls, and to check out the architecture.  Plus, countless movies and TV shows have been filmed in the library, most notably, Seinfeld and the Sex and the City movie.

Photo from NYPL.org