New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Profile

Of its 90 million items, only 30 percent of the largest performing-arts collection in the world comprises books. The rest is music scores, historic recordings, videotapes, autographed manuscripts, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters, and photographs. The three-floor institution, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects and completed in 1965, is organized into four major non-circulating collections: the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the Music Division (which traces its origins to 1888), the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, and the Billy Rose Theatre Collection. Selections can be pored over and digested at various screening stations or in reading rooms. There are also three art galleries on-site for displays from the sizable archives. — Caroline Kinneberg