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The branch library is an architectural commission with a variable program: Not beholden to the grandeur expected of a central location, it can more readily conform to the needs of its local community. What do residents want? Meeting spaces? Workspaces? Access to services or the internet? An area for kids? Perhaps just a quiet place to read a book? Beyond its two flagship Midtown hubs, the New York Public Library (NYPL) operates 90 branches across Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. (Brooklyn and Queens have their own systems.) The latest for NYPL is a new $10 million, 20,000-square-foot facility for Inwood, a hilly neighborhood at the northern end of Manhattan’s panhandle where the A train ends. Designed by Andrew Berman Architect, the handsome interior is like an Apple Store mixed with a Roman basilica. It occupies the ground floor of a $59-million, 14-story tower, designed by Fogarty Finger, that contains 174 affordable apartments.
They call it The Eliza after Eliza Hamilton, widow of founding father Alexander Hamilton, who opened the first school in nearby Washington Heights in 1818. The new mixed-use building, constructed on city-owned land, replaced Inwood’s first NYPL building, which opened in 1952. By the 2010s, the 3-story structure had seen better days. Everything needed major work, so it “wasn’t unthinkable to think about building something new on this site,” Dana Sunshine, director of capital and real estate initiatives at NYPL, told me during a recent visit.
The idea to colocate a new branch library with housing above dovetailed into wider neighborhood activity. Inwood was rezoned in 2018 under Mayor Bill de Blasio with the goal of adding affordable housing, encouraging economic development, creating open space along the Harlem River, and preserving community character. But the rezoning allows for additional height along major streets and on parcels adjacent to the Harlem River, which sets the stage for commercial development.
The plan was immediately challenged by residents who were worried about displacement and community impacts. Their case went to the New York State Supreme Court, which ruled in the coalition’s favor, but an appeal overturned the ruling, and a follow-up was denied in 2020. The Eliza was announced in 2021 and reached substantial completion this summer. While the library is open, residents have yet to move in, and the finishing touches are still being applied to the project’s community spaces.
Berman and Chris Fogarty, cofounding principal of Fogarty Finger, teamed up with Housing Workshop NY, Community League of the Heights, Alembic Development Company, The Children’s Village, and Ranger Properties to win the commission. In addition to the library, their plan proposed spaces for community use. On the second floor, prekindergarten classrooms are painted in orange and yellow tones, and the education area includes an outdoor terrace at the rear of the building, overlooking the grounds of a middle school. In the basement, a suite of rooms will support adult education and a STEM lab for robotics. A commercial kitchen will soon be home to the fourth location of Emma’s Torch, which trains refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking for careers in the culinary world. Each of these interiors was designed by Fogarty Finger.
The Eliza is reserved for residents who make up to 60 percent of the Area Mean Income (AMI), or about $74,500 for a two-person household this year. Ten percent of the units are for New Yorkers who earn up to 30 percent AMI, and 15 percent for formerly unhoused people. Rents are tied to income, so a one-bedroom will go for $500 to $1,300 a month. This is a steep break from typical pricing: Next door to The Eliza is Tryon North, a market-rate apartment complex where a 1-bedroom unit rents for over $3,000.
The four separate entries for different programs—plus a fifth passage, an egress hallway for the adjacent school—created competition for frontage access along Broadway in the ground-floor plan. (The hallway also doubles as a book-delivery corridor for the library.) Above, the T-shaped plan arranges tidy units along two short, double-loaded corridors. Resident amenities include a rooftop lounge and outdoor terrace, coworking space, laundry facility, gym, and bike room.
The Eliza is more impressive in section and elevation, as Fogarty and Berman collaborated from the start to find a structural grid that would work for both the library and the units above. Rather than the typical arrangement of contorting library uses to fit a leftover space, the design team “had this great opportunity to think of the way we were doing the housing above the library so that we could make the library work as well as it could,” Fogarty remarked.
On the nicely proportioned facade, the brick-clad columns run continuously upward, only interrupted by a channel reveal that separates the podium from the tower. Above, two floors of apartment windows are ganged together and padded out by terra-cotta panels. (Maximum and minimum window sizing for affordable units is regulated by the city.) Below, large pieces of low-iron glass are set flush to the brick. The idea was to make the library feel like part of the city, which it easily does.
The interior reads like a temple for the people. A double-height central space is capped by a skylight, and an illuminated panel creates a billboard of light that draws people in and up. The materials are durable but honorable: exposed concrete columns (carefully protected during construction by Mega Contracting, the project’s general contractor), a slatted-wood acoustic ceiling, terrazzo floors, thin steel guardrails, and color via orange carpet, warm red lounge chairs, and a rainbow of poufs.
Berman, who has completed numerous branch libraries and library interiors, including the Van Cortlandt Branch Library in the Bronx, said the design “speaks to the important idea of the library as a generous facility.” The new library acts like a courtyard or a piazza; it’s a public destination, and “the architecture underscores that through big, open, easy-to-comprehend spaces.” He wanted the building to be quickly understood. “You walk in the door, you know where you are and you feel the confidence to self-discover, because it’s all unfolding in front of you.” Beyond the great room there are separated spaces for children and teens, meeting rooms, two reservable community rooms, and of course Wi-Fi and plentiful outlets.
Already, the library hums with activity. It is the type of public space where it feels comfortable to stay for a while and disappear into a book, magazine, or computer screen.
Inside and out, the building is thoughtfully designed to serve New Yorkers. Sunshine said NYPL will use the same approach for its branch location along the Bronx’s Grand Concourse. (Brooklyn Public Library finished similar projects in Brooklyn Heights and Sunset Park in recent years.) This tracks with the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” advanced by Mayor Eric Adams, which would spur the creation of up to 108,850 new homes over the next 15 years, and an earlier order that required city agencies to review their sites to see if they are suitable for building affordable housing.
Still, the relationship between NYPL and city hall has been tumultuous lately. Over the summer, NYPL waged a successful public campaign complete with fire memes and 174,000 letters of support to undo $58.3 million in city budget cuts that had forced closure of library locations on Sundays. With his recent indictment on charges of bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy, Adams now faces bigger problems beyond punching down on beloved public institutions.
The Eliza demonstrates how architects can deliver thoughtful, dignified spaces to be used by everyone. More of this, please!