Jump to content

New York Public Library in popular culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The New York Public Library has been referenced numerous times in popular culture. Most of these depictions show the NYPL's flagship branch, an official national and city landmark.

Architecture and sculpture

[edit]

Film

[edit]

Literature

[edit]

Books

[edit]
  • Lawrence Blochman's 1942 mystery, Death Walks in Marble Halls, features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer.
  • In the 1984 murder mystery by Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys, an NYPL librarian stumbles on two dead bodies, c. 1930.
  • In the 1996 novel Contest by Matthew Reilly, the NYPL is the setting for an intergalactic gladiatorial fight.
  • Cynthia Ozick's 2004 novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, set just prior to World War II, involves a refugee-scholar from Hitler's Germany researching the Karaite Jews at NYPL.
  • Lynne Sharon Schwartz's The Writing on the Wall (2005) features a language researcher working at NYPL, who grapples with her past following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
  • Linda Fairstein's Lethal Legacy (2009) is centered around the library.
  • In Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the main character visits the NYPL to look up her condition in the dictionary.
  • Allen Kurzweil's The Grand Complication is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are used to find a missing museum object.
  • Laura Ruby's The Chaos King centers around the library.
  • Peng Shepherd's The Cartographers (2022) features a main character solving the mystery of a map found hidden in the Map Division of the library.

The library is referred to in:

Additionally, excerpts from several of the many memoirs and essays mentioning the New York Public Library are included in the anthology Reading Rooms (1991), including reminiscences by Alfred Kazin, Henry Miller, and Kate Simon.

Poetry

[edit]

Both branches and the central building have been immortalized in numerous poems, including:

  • Paul Blackburn's "Graffiti" (in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn [1985])
  • Richard Eberhart's "Reading Room, The New York Public Library" (in his Collected Poems, 1930–1986 [1988])
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Library Scene, Manhattan" (in his How to Paint Sunlight [2001])
  • Arthur Guiterman's "The Book Line; Rivington Street Branch, New York Public Library" (in his Ballads of Old New York [1920])
  • Muriel Rukeyser's "Nuns in the Wind" (in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser [2005])
  • Susan Thomas' "New York Public Library" (the anthology American Diaspora [2001])
  • E.B. White's "Reading Room" (Poems and Sketches of E.B. White [1981])
  • Aaron Zeitlin's poem about going to the library, included in his 2-volume Ale lider un poemes [Complete Lyrics and Poems] (1967 and 1970)

Music

[edit]

Television

[edit]
  • The library is the inspiration for the Busterfield Library in Between the Lions.
  • It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory", the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series.
  • The animated television series Futurama has Fry confronting a giant brain at the NYPL in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid".
  • In the Seinfeld episode "The Library", Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) dates an NYPL librarian, Jerry Seinfeld is accosted by a library cop (Philip Baker Hall) for late fees, and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its steps.
  • It was shown in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler as the Drexler Museum of Art.
  • In the second episode of Girl Meets World ("Girl Meets Boy"), Cory gives to the class an assignment to do in the New York Public Library.
  • The penultimate and final episodes of Season 2 of Person of Interest feature scenes which take place in New York Public Library, and is the location of the Machine's godmode phonecall after it was crashed by a virus.
  • In the Season One episode of The Newsroom "The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn", Charlie Skinner meets an anonymous NSA whistleblower in the NYPL to discuss the NSA's surveillance programs.
  • In the fifth-season finale episode of Once Upon a Time "An Untold Story", Henry asks Emma, Regina, Rumple, and Violet to make a wish and throw a penny in the fountain outside the library in hopes of restoring magic to get his family home. After seeing that it works, Henry stands on a pedestal by one of the lion statues outside the library and asks others to believe in magic again and throw pennies in the fountain. People soon do it and Emma and Regina soon see that what Henry is doing is actually restoring magic, allowing his family to come home through in a portal in the fountain made by everyone's wishes. When everyone sees what is happening, Henry is sad due to the people believing it was a magic trick, but Emma soon tells him that he made the city to actually believe in magic.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ New York – Universal Studios Singapore. Retrieved 24 September 2017 from the Official Site Archived 2012-08-26 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ "20 years of changes at Universal Orlando: A pictorial history - part two". Orlando Informer. 2012-09-19. Retrieved 2017-09-24.
  3. ^ a b Library, The New York Public (2012-11-13). "Selected Movies and Television Shows Filmed at The New York Public Library | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  4. ^ Campbell, Christopher (October 20, 2013). "7 NYC Landmark Scenes We Love From 'The Wiz'". Film School Rejects.
  5. ^ "Who You Gonna Call?". Improv Everywhere. 2010-05-18. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
  6. ^ Rottenberg, Josh (May 18, 2019). "How the 'John Wick 3' team and an NBA player pulled off that fight in a library". Los Angeles Times.