Eustis Chair Manufactures New Antique Reproduction Chairs for Recent Restoration of New York Public Library Rose Reading Room
The New York Public Library is a beautiful library. It has a prime location on West 40th Street. A $317 million project to restore the library began in 2008. Further, The renovation and restoration project aims to make the facilities more accessible to the public. It increases and creates educational resources. The project expands both the indoor and outdoor spaces. All in all, The goal is to connect the community to the library’s historical roots. We are thrilled to manufacture antique reproduction chairs for the library.
Altogether, the interior and exterior of the building will be updated. The library aims to increase the total space by 20%. The library provides public space for education, research, and exhibitions. A new entrance to the library on West 40th Street will be a welcome addition. A surrounding plaza, terrace, and loading dock are a welcome addition as well.
New York Public Library’s beloved reading room is a cultural staple of New York City. A 16 pound plaster rosette fell 52 feet within the room in 2014. Generally, the building remains structurally sound. The combination of moisture degradation and human activity in the library were determined as the cause. So, an extensive scaffolding system now exists in both the Blass and Rose Room’s ceilings. Without delay, beams and wood planking replaced damaged ceiling chunks and loose plaster. A crew installed a new mural of Bill Blass on the ceiling. The Historic Rose Main Reading Room and Bill Blass Public Catalog Room opened on October 5th, 2019.
Eustis Provides Durable Wood Chairs
Finally, we installed the Rose Reading Room’s historic chair for the opening. Classic wooden chairs in beloved reading locations have high volume use. New York Public Library continues to replace a handful of chairs every so often over the years using different vendors, but none lasted as long as they hoped. After hearing about plans for renovation, we reached out in May of 2016. We asked if we could assist in creating antique replica replacements of their classic chairs.
The New York Public Library agreed, and we completed their request for 504 replacement chairs in November 2018. Delivered in early October, the antique reproduction chairs are a perfect match to the originals, only infinitely more durable, guaranteed to last the library at least 20 years of use! 40 of our new chairs will go directly to the reading room and 60 of our chase will be delivered to the new Dorothy Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers (which opens this Friday!).