A glowing shrine to books The childrens library on the lower ground level at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York. A mighty wall of books impresses in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, a transformed branch that bursts with new services and technology. Max Touhey via The New York Times. by James S. Russell (NYT NEWS SERVICE) .- Muddling along for four decades in a nondescript former department store, the Mid-Manhattan Library, at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in New York City, served a growing swarm of local residents and commuters even as the branch steadily became a dilapidated embarrassment to the New York Public Library system, as Anthony Marx, its president, put it.