New York Mercantile Library

From the New York Commercial Advertiser (November 2, 1820)

The foundation of the Mercantile Library Association was instigated by the New York Chamber of Commerce,[5] which placed newspaper advertisements in November 1820 asking merchant clerks to meet at a local coffee house to discuss forming an organization based on the Mercantile Library in Boston, which had been created earlier that year.[4] The purpose of the new organization was to provide the city's growing population of clerks with an alternative to what were considered to be immoral entertainments and other vices of the city.[5][6]

The association's first subscription circulating library, which had 700 volumes[7] in rented rooms at 49 Fulton Street in Manhattan, was open to most of the general public, but only merchant clerks were allowed to vote for and be officers in the association.[8] By the year 1826, the financial "prospects brightened to the extent that the officers hired a suite of rooms in the Harpers building on Cliff Street, and starting the reading room, which has continued to be an important part of the institution in all its successive homes.”[1] In 1830, the library moved to a new building designed by architect Seth Geer, called Clinton Hall, at Nassau and Beekman Streets,[9] which the Clinton Hall Association, made up of prominent members of the Mercantile Library Association, had raised funds to construct.[8] Frequent lectures were presented by the library,[10] including by Ralph Waldo Emerson [11] and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[12]

In addition to reading materials, as of the 1850s the association owned "a cabinet of minerals and shells, a collection of revolutionary medals, miscellaneous coins, various paintings, statue of the 'Dancing Girl Reposing', Minerva, and a bust of Philip Stone.[13]

Reading room, Mercantile Library Association, New York City, circa 1871

By 1853, the association had over 4,000 members[14] and over 30,000 volumes, and in 1854, the library moved again, this time uptown to the Astor Opera House building on Lafayette Street between Astor Place and East 8th Street.[8] The opera house had closed its doors as a result of the Astor Place riot of 1849, and the building was sold for $140,000[15] to the association, which renamed it "Clinton Hall" and moved the library there as a place which was more convenient to its members.[8] At its new location, the association offered classes and public lectures, including by Frederick Douglass, William Thackeray, and Mark Twain,[4] and functioned as a cultural center.[8]

Membership during this period reached at least 12,000, while the library itself amassed 120,000 volumes, making it the largest circulating library in the United States at the time.[8] By 1872 the library contained works of biography; history, geography and travels; literature; mathematics; medical science; mental and moral science; natural sciences; political science; the arts; and theology.[16] However, because the library did not stay open late at night, its services were not generally available to the working class, a deficit which was remedied when the Cooper Union opened a block east on Astor Place: its reading room was open until 10 p.m.[17]

In 1891, requiring more space, the association tore down the opera house and replaced it with an 11-story building designed by George E. Harney,[18] which it also named "Clinton Hall". The new building featured a reading room on the top floor that was two stories high,[7][19] and was to remain the headquarters for its library operations, which included 7 branches, until 1920, when it relocated to rented space.[7] However, in 1932, the library once again had its own building, at 17 East 47th Street, designed by Henry Otis Chapman.[7] Here, the association maintained its 230,000 volumes to serve 3,000 subscribers.[7][8] The library at this time still had branches at 149 Broadway at Liberty Street and 598 Madison Avenue at 57th Street.[7]

11-story Clinton Hall building replaced the Opera House as headquarters. In later years it was the Chinese consulate,[20] a union headquarters, the Astor Place Hotel, an office building, and, currently, condominiums.

The Center for Fiction's headquarters at 17 East 47th Street, which it sold sometime after 2008.[21]

Membership in the library declined through the following decades, and the library sold off parts of its collection in the 1970s. "In 1971 the theological collection was sold, in 1977 the foreign language collection was sold."[7] It also attempted a merger with Pace College, but this did not occur. By 1987 the library was in financial distress, and closed for the summer of 1987, and then indefinitely in 1989, at a time when its membership was only 375 people. The association subsequently reorganized and reopened, with a new focus on fiction and literature.

In 1998, the ground floor of the building was renovated by Beyer Blinder Belle.[7] The library – colloquially known as "The Merc" – had considered moving to a new location in 2008,[22][23] but subsequently decided to remain at its historic Midtown Manhattan location.