Mariano Moreno, the first director, prompted the creation of the Library as part of a package of measures aimed at forging a public alert towards political and civic life.

This is the reason early visitors unfamiliar with the story of the building were commonly surprised when walking a staircase adorned with lottery-ornaments.

During Groussac's forty-year administration the library's patrimony was also enriched with many important donations including Angel Justiniano Carranza's personal collection, 18,600 volumes from the nineteenth-century legal expert Amancio Alcorta, and Martín García Merou's collection - which included valuable papers regarding the foundation of the city of Buenos Aires.

During Martinez Zuviria's tenure the modernization of services and the growth of the library collection became his focus; both of which enhanced the nation's heritage.

The next director, whose presence is one of Argentina's key twentieth century intellectual figures, was Jorge Luis Borges.

The successive changes in government leadership and bureaucracies, along with certain indifferences towards cultural matters were factors that delayed the project originally envisioned by the architectural team of Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia Cazzaniga.