The Mid-Manhattan Library opened in 1970 to house the circulating collection formerly located in the NYPL's Main Branch.

[1] Arnold Constable acquired the site in 1914[2][3] and hired T. Joseph Bartley to design a department store there,[4][5] which opened in November 1915.

[9] When the Arnold Constable store had been in operation, the rooftop had contained a brick penthouse with a recreation room and an employee cafeteria.

[7][5] On the SNFL's rooftop is a terrace with an event space under a "wizard hat" enclosure painted copper green.

[7][5] When the Mid-Manhattan Library opened in 1970, it had 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of floor space and could accommodate 350,000 volumes, with plans to expand to 700,000.

[12][17] The basement space has a conveyor belt for dropping off books, as well as a public room and a recording studio for teenagers.

[12][18] The rebuilt library contains a three-story circulating area called the Long Room on the second through fourth floors, each of which has an 85-by-17-foot (25.9 by 5.2 m) opening near their eastern end.

[11] The ceiling of the Long Room, designed by Turkish artist Hayal Pozanti, contains an alphabet of 31 glyphs.

The NYPL planned to create a 500,000-volume collection on the three top floors, targeted primarily toward college students, who were overwhelming the capacity of the Main Branch's research facilities.

[26] Bloch & Hesse commenced a renovation of the Arnold Constable building's fourth through sixth floors in 1968, and it was completed in late 1970.

[32] In 1978, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York sold $8 million in bonds to finance improvements to the Mid-Manhattan branch.

[1][4][9] The Mid-Manhattan Library started moving back into the Arnold Constable building between 1981 and 1982,[1] officially opening in February 1982.

[36] By 1983, the NYPL had also signed a contract with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to operate a gift shop and bookstore in the Mid-Manhattan Library.

[40] With the opening of the Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) at the nearby B. Altman and Company Building in 1996, some 40,000 volumes were relocated to the new branch.

[41] Ruth Messinger, the borough president of Manhattan, proposed $1.63 million in funding for renovation of the Mid-Manhattan Library the following year.

The renovation was planned to include 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) of retail space and expanded stacks that could accommodate up to a million items.

[43] The winning proposal, by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, included a serpentine glass tower that would have risen above the Mid-Manhattan Library.

[43][44] This renovation never took place, as the NYPL faced budget cuts in the wake of the September 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan.

[4] By the following year, thirty percent of the Mid-Manhattan Branch's shelves were empty due to the NYPL's budgetary shortfalls.

After a protracted battle and two public interest lawsuits, the plan was abandoned in May 2014 due to pressure by its opponents and the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor.

[53] Dutch firm Mecanoo was selected for the renovation,[54] and the NYPL's board of trustees approved the plans in November 2016.

[62] The NYPL subsequently announced that the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library would reopen in July 2020 for book pick-ups and drop-offs only.

[21] The SNFL officially opened for full service on June 1, 2021;[18][67] the Pasculano Learning Center remained closed until that September, and there were strict capacity limits for the rooftop pavilion.

[68] Justin Davidson wrote for Curbed that "books have a home in plain view and within reach" in the SNFL, a contrast to the stacks of the main branch.

[17] According to James S. Russell of The New York Times, the renovated library "delights book obsessives but also offers lines of computers atop long tables and a dizzying array of" services.