There once was a girl named Mary.
The lions didn't roar when she walked
by the Library.
Ogden Nash
Guarding the great white building on Fifth Avenue, the two stone lions that roar only at virgins are probably the friendliest beasts in the Manhattan jungle. Last week the New York Public Library was 50 years old and, it happily boasted, "used by more persons for more purposes than any other library in the world."
The nation's biggest public library is actually a private triumphthe work of three rich, generous New Yorkers who never saw the final result. In 1848 immigrant Fur Tycoon John Jacob Astor...