Everyone wanted to come the United States by the early 20th century, and everyone who came did so through New York. Many never left the city, and by the start of the 20th century New York surpassed Paris for the most populous metropolis, and was quickly catching up to London for the top spot. New York was becoming a great city, which meant it needed to a have a great library to rival the ones in London and Paris. Such was the thinking of Samuel J. Tilden, the philanthropist and one-time governor, who bequeathed a staggering $2.4 million, most of his fortune, to the building of a great library of New York.

On this day, May 23, in 1911 the public library of New York was dedicated, exactly sixteen years after merging with the other two prominent  collections, the public reference library of John Jacob Astor, and the private but publicly accessible James Lennox library.

The New York Public Library was a monument of a building — 12 floors of books, with more than 75 miles of shelving. More than a million books were indexed and placed in the collection, available for anyone to borrow simply for the asking.