Hi everyone.  We are excited to bring you a new blog series in which we follow our incredibly talented designer Jodi as she visits New York City’s galleries, museums, exhibits and more in search of inspiration.  Her first stop was the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.

Jodi went specifically to these parts of the enormous library:

1.  The library displays : the first Gutenberg Bible to cross the Atlantic (on display by the reading room), a large Rotunda with a mural that is called “The Story of the Recorded Word”, where you’ll find Prometheus giving a man the gift of fire, which symbolizes knowledge, one of the largest sections dedicated to the Judaica and Hebraica collections.

2.  Free exhibitions for print and photography (located on the 1st and 3rd floors)

3.  Children’s Center on the ground floor where they house the original Winnie the Pooh bear.

4.  Periodicals and world maps (more than 500,000 maps, atlases, and cartography books from the late 16th century till now) are accessible in the map room.

5.  They also have a “curiosities” collection at the Jill Kupin Rose Gallery. Collections include E.E. Cumming’s death mask, Mary Poppin’s umbrella, and a letter opener made from Charles Dicken’s beloved cat: Bob.

6.  The Rose Main Reading Room (which is almost the size of a football field). It seats 636 readers at a time.

Here are her recollections in her own words:

Most of my pictures are of the architecture, lighting, and details in the iron/wood work – stuff that normally, people might not pay too much attention to. It was a small study of the building itself: the gold trims, inlays, and patinas, the murals and stone work. The railing that stretch down the wide stone steps, the approximately two foot lanterns that dangle from vaulted ceilings decorated with embossed symbolic sculptures of leaves and instruments. Everything looked like it took a lot of time to do. From the iron gate that keeps the fire hose, to the custom gold door knobs, no detail was left to wander.

From the second story balcony, I looked out through the decorated window pane atop one of the doorways in the lobby. And time had slowed down. For a moment, I felt transported to the 1930′s, and what I had been recording, became more of an experience. Realization dawned that this library is a “living” museum, where people to this day, still use it as it was intended since its conception in the early 1900′s. Not only are we witnessing history, we are willing contributors.

Thank you so much Jodi.  We can’t wait to see what you open our eyes to next!