Steve Schwarzman Has a New Enemy
Last May, billionaire financier Steve Schwarzman made a $100 million donation to the New York Library. The gift, which followed more than a year of blistering press coverage (remember: never let a Journal reporter into your home and allow him/her to interview the household help!) wasn't without one big string: The library's Beaux-Arts main branch on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue had to be renamed in the Blackstone Group co-founder's honor. It's been more than a year since then, but clearly some people have no intention of ever calling it the "Schwarzman Building."
Like the blogger behind Jeremiah's Vanishing New York:
I was confused recently when, planning to visit the NYPL Main Branch's Microforms collection, I looked up the building's hours online and couldn't find them—because the page kept giving the hours for the Steven Schwarzman Building and I kept looking for the words "Main Branch."
I will never call the Main Branch of the New York Public Library by its new name, the Steven Schwarzman Building. I will call it the Main Branch. Even when everyone else is running around saying, "Oh, did you see the show on 17th-century maps up at the Schwarzman?" I will be confused—"Where? At the what?"—even if I know perfectly well what they're talking about.
Sounds like an anti-Schwarzman demonstration outside the NYPL isn't out of the realm of possibility!