Blackstone CEO gives $100M for New York Public Library makeover

Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group CEO known as a buyout mastermind, has pledged $100 million for a makeover at the central New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. After its reconstruction is finished in about 2014, the century-old Fifth Avenue structure will be called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The central library will no longer be used just for research. It will absorb the circulating collection from the system’s Mid-Manhattan branch, at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street, which will be sold. The library has been criticized for its $59 million sale of the Donnell branch in Midtown in November to Orient-Express Hotels, which plans an 11-story hotel, with the library on the ground and basement floors.