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THE CAMPUS :
Seymour B. Durst Old York Library Reading Room
What is probably the most important and certainly the most idiosyncratic collection of historical materials on New York City ever privately assembled was turned over to public scholarship with the dedication of the Seymour B. Durst Old York Library and Reading Room at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. The late Seymour Durst, a New York City real estate developer, started the collection in the early 1960s and by the time he died in 1995 it filled nearly every nook and cranny of his five-story East Side townhouse. The Graduate Center’s Reading Room contains 3,000 of the most rare books along with furnishings from the study in Seymour Durst’s original "Old York Library" townhouse. In addition to books, the collection includes photos, images, postcards, maps, and other New York City memorabilia. The bulk of materials not in the reading room are in the Old York Library Research Room at The Graduate Center, and an online version of the collection can be found at www.oldyorklibrary.org Also, many of the materials from the collection have been incorporated in the Virtual New York website --www.virtualny.cuny.edu -- an on line resource of historical materials and information about the City created by The Graduate Center’s New Media Lab. In addition to donating a significant portion of the collection, The Old York Foundation, created by Mr. Durst and now headed by his daughter Wendy Durst Kreeger, provided a $2 million endowment to support maintenance of the collection, a curator, creation of the online version, and two Seymour Durst Fellowships to be awarded to Graduate Center students studying New York City history.
Seymour Durst had a passion for New York City history. In all, there are about 9,000 titles, encompassing four centuries of New York City history, plus about 3,000 glossy photos, 20,000 postcards about New York, historical maps, and thousands of pamphlets, guidebooks, magazines, newspapers, and various New York ephemera. The photos include materials from the morgue of the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune. Many of the postcards are mailed versions with messages that provide personal reactions to landmark locations and events. Among the more rare items are one of the ten copies of the 1811 Commissioners Grid Map that outlined the City’s path of development for the rest of the century; the six-volume first edition of Stoke’s Iconography of Manhattan Island, showing maps and views of the city before 1915; and the Manuals of the Common Council, 1841-1870, a.k.a. "The Valentine Manuals." (See Backgrounder for more examples.)
According to Wendy Durst Kreeger, " the collection was donated in large measure to the Graduate Center because of their commitment to insure the integrity of the way my father organized the material, as well as the ability to provide educational access and scholarly use presented by this vital public institution." She also remarked that her father assembled the collection "out of a love of information and history." He often opened his home library to individual authors and researchers.
The Durst family has been involved in New York City real estate for over 85 years. Their firm was started in 1915 by Seymour’s father Joseph, who came to this country ten years before with $3 sewn into the label of his coat. Over the years they continued to acquire property in Midtown Manhattan, as Joseph’s sons, Seymour, Royal and David joined the firm. When Joseph handed over the reins to his sons, they had developed four major office buildings along Third Avenue. During the 60’s they began to develop properties on the Westside. The firm is now headed by Seymour’s son Douglas, who, along with his cousin Jody, was responsible for the successful completion of the first environmentally responsible large scale office project in the country at 4 Times Square. Douglas is President of The Durst Organization and Chairman of The Graduate Center Foundation, and Seymour’s daughter Wendy Durst Kreeger has been actively involved in establishing the library and its endowment.
Although a quiet, reserved person, Seymour Durst was not shy about sharing his views with others. He was passionate about his concerns for rezoning manufacturing districts in Manhattan as a way to encourage much needed housing. He successfully fought against the development of Westway, which over time would have made the current redevelopment along the Hudson impossible. He also ran ads at the bottom of page one in The New York Times on a wide range of concerns. By the time of his death in 1995, he had used his "Bottom Lines" some 200 times to share his concerns on topics ranging from inadequate housing, poor zoning rules and his dislike for city planning. It was here that he began his crusade extolling the dangers of our rising national debt long before it was a political issue. He is also known as the creator of the "national debt clock" on the Avenue of the Americas, a second-by-second accounting of the growth of the national debt and each American family’s share of it.
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Backgrounder:
The Seymour B. Durst Old York Library and Reading Room at The Graduate Center
Seymour Durst began his collection in 1962 after visiting Paris, where he found a German edition of an elaborate photographic book about New York City in a bookstore window. Eventually, even the refrigerator in Durst’s townhouse was filled with books (he ate out). He had, in fact, moved twice to accommodate the ever-growing library.
Durst assembled his library in a manner that would arouse both the envy and despair of the average librarian. It was organized by what he termed the "Durst Quintessimal System" and filled all but four of the 20 rooms in the house. Each room had a different theme and if a book fell into three different categories he would simply buy three copies, one for each related room. Some of the other rooms/categories include the Postcard & Guide Room, a kitchen closet reserved for NY Historical Society publications, the Art & Theatre Room, the Architecture Closet, the Commerce and Finance Room, the Biography Room, etc. The Reading Room at The Graduate Center reflects those categories of organization, and the furnishings include a rug, table, breakfront, and couches from Durst’s study, along with book cabinets built especially for the room.The thousands of items encompass such things as an invitation to the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, which is referred to as "the East River Bridge" bound editions of Harper’s Weekly from 1850 to 1915; Durst’s own favorite book, E.B. White’s Here is New York; The Bowery on Seventy-Five Cents a Day; an autographed copy of Theodore Dreiser’s My City; and numbered editions of Al Hirschfeld’s 1932 Manhattan Oases (199/200), featuring drawings of city speakeasy bartenders, and the artist’s 1941 depictions of Harlem (445/1000). Among the more rare books, though not directly related to New York City, is an original edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense with Paine’s own edits hand-written between the lines. (See above for more examples.)
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| The Seymour B. Durst Old York Library and Reading Room |
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Selected images from
the collection.
Click on image for a larger view. |
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