New York Public Library CEO Anthony Marx: 5 Questions

In June 2024, New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) announced the grand opening of the Eliza, a 100 percent affordable residential building in Manhattan’s Inwood anchored by a new two-story, 20,000-square-foot public library on the site of the decades-old Inwood Library. 

Both the apartment building and the library were designed by architectural firm Fogarty Finger in collaboration with Andrew Berman Architect. The building was the result of a multi-agency effort that included the New York Public Library (NYPL). 

Since then, the city and the NYPL have announced several more such initiatives, now branded as the “Living Libraries” program. 

In November 2025, HPD and the NYPL announced that the Grand Concourse Library in the Bronx would be reimagined into the Heartwood, “a new community hub that includes approximately 113 affordable, rent-stabilized homes atop a new, state-of-the-art public library.” That project is currently at the beginning of the city approval process. 

The following month, the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced a request for proposals for a long-term ground lease or sale of the site of both the NYPL’s Bloomingdale branch and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s (DOHMH) Riverside Health Center, at West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, for the purpose of redeveloping the site into mixed-income housing, a new branch for the library, and modernized facilities for DOHMH. 

(The Brooklyn Public Library, which is a separate system, announced a similar project in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in November 2023, and is currently making progress on a combined library/housing development in New Utrecht.) 

In February, Commercial Observer spoke with Anthony Marx, the NYPL’s president and CEO since 2011, about the participation of the nation’s largest library system in the affordable housing sector, and the potential for further projects of this sort to help alleviate New York’s ongoing housing shortage.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: Tell me about the Living Libraries program, and the nature of NYPL’s involvement. 

Anthony Marx: In the city, we have almost 2.5 million square feet of space across 92 libraries. On a regular basis, we need to upgrade those libraries, and in some cases replace them. Some of them are old. There’s a category of those that are Carnegie libraries, or landmark libraries, and some overlap between those two categories, where we respect that architecture and that history. 

We seek capital funds from the city to renovate those libraries and make them great, and we’ve been doing a great job of that. But that leaves everything else. 

There are some branches where we lease space. Those are a minority. We don’t have much control over those, because we’re not the landlord. Some private person is the landlord. 

But in most cases, the city owns the land. We operate those libraries. At one point we said to ourselves — and we hadn’t for 100 years before this — is there a way to benefit the library by using the air above these spaces to help the library do what the library needs to do, which is make sure we have great branches in every neighborhood? We’re serious about that effort. We spent probably over a billion dollars on library renovations in the 14 years that I’ve been here, and we still have another half a billion dollars of needs that we’re talking with the city about. 

This is an ongoing project because of the scale of what we do, and we realize that in many instances the air is something we could use, and, in doing so, we could help the city solve the problem of housing — affordable housing in particular. 

The simple notion is, if we can put a package together with the city and private funders where we can get a new, often bigger and better library, and the city can benefit from affordable housing in a tower above that, that’s a beautiful thing, right? Everybody wins. 

We piloted this in the neighborhood I grew up in, in the branch I grew up using, which is in Inwood. We put a package together that included the city as well as the Robin Hood Foundation and a personal donor, and we were able to build a beautiful, new, bigger and better library with 174 units of 100 percent affordable housing above us. That encouraged us to think, can we do more of this? 

It was hard, because it was the first time, and we had to learn a lot about how to do this. We are not in the business of providing affordable housing, so we only do this when we can partner with a developer. We’re not in the rent collection or renter selection business, but we’re happy to help make this possible for people who are experts at doing that. 

So then we started looking at our other locations. We’ve come up with at least two that are now in process. One is above the Grand Concourse branch, where we will have a brand-new library and 113 units of affordable housing, in partnership with the Settlement Housing Fund, who are pros at this. We’ve already begun the city approval process for that project. 

The next one up is Bloomingdale, which is on 100th street. That one’s a little more complicated, because the location housing the site currently houses both our branch and a health office for the city. We are in partnership there with EDC, rather than HPD, to see if we can work toward a project that would provide a brand-new library — which the neighborhood needs and deserves — and as many as 800 or maybe even 850 units of housing above it. 

One of the issues that is not yet resolved in this instance is what the mix of affordable and less affordable housing should be. That’s a topic we need to discuss with the city and the developer. We are mindful that in this instance, and in any other instances going forward, we need to make sure there’s enough money to produce a great new library. 

Typically, we can only generate enough money to increase the percentage of affordable housing if we get an outside funder. The numbers have to work. If we don’t get outside support, then we can’t build 100 percent affordable housing above because it doesn’t generate enough funds to renovate the library or build a new library. In the case of Bloomingdale, that’s an ongoing conversation with the city and the community, and we learned at Inwood how important it is to talk to the community.

Right now, we have a new administration, so we’re talking to them about what that would look like. Beyond that, I’ll just say that now, every time we see the need or the possibility of renovating a library or rebuilding a new one — and that is often the case given that our library facilities age out at some point — we examine whether it’s possible to do housing above it, and then we look to see whether we can partner with the city and a donor, and find a developer that wants to see how much we can maximize affordable housing.

It probably will be different in each individual case, but the general rule we are excited about is to be able to partner with the city to make the air above the libraries benefit not only the creation of new libraries, but also the housing New Yorkers need.

What exactly is the NYPL’s responsibility for these projects?

Our responsibility is to run the library, and to put together a package or partnerships that make the housing above possible. There’s a separate developer that runs the affordable housing. I assume they have an ongoing relationship with the city. We’re not in the rent collection or renter selection business. That’s not our expertise.

As an example, in Inwood, we were in close conversation with HPD to say, “The air is available, we’re happy to use it. Here’s the package that brings Robin Hood in.” We did the work with Robin Hood and the donor to make that happen. Then HPD found the developer and set the rules in terms of what the housing will look like and how it will operate going forward. 

To be clear, bringing in Robin Hood and an outside donor meant that money was available to help pay for the new library, which meant we didn’t need as many resources from the development, so there was more flexibility to make that development 100 percent affordable.

If that donor had not come in, then part of the developer’s responsibility would have been helping to fund the library?

Or changing the mix from 100 percent affordable to something less, so that there was enough money generated to do both the library and the housing project above it.

Is there anything else you want people to know about NYPL’s role in this initiative?

It’s that the library has gotten creative. We recognized that the air above our locations is a resource that can help benefit the library by helping to fund new libraries, and also has the combined effect of making it possible to build more housing — including more affordable housing — for New Yorkers, which is a great need. 

The actual mix of what that looks like depends on the package, the donor, the city’s funding, etc. We’re delighted when there’s more affordable housing, and we discuss all that with the city and the community, but the message for the commercial real estate industry is that we are getting creative about using air so that there can be developments above our libraries. 

Are there any other sites you’re currently looking at for this?

We are looking at all of our sites to see what is possible, and we’re in the process of figuring that out. We’re not ready yet to say what other sites look promising, but we like this idea enough for all the obvious reasons that everyone should like this idea. 

It was a simple case of us asking the question: Can we use the air above us to benefit us, meaning libraries, but also benefit the city in terms of housing? It took us some time to figure out the answer to that, but it would prove that there was a very positive answer, and we’re excited to see where else we can do it. 

Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.