Hunters Point Community Library

November 26, 2019

Disability rights group files lawsuit challenging inaccessibility of new Long Island City library

A disability rights group filed a lawsuit on Tuesday that claims a new public library in Queens does not provide full access for those with mobility disabilities. The civil suit, filed by the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York and the Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), says the newly constructed Hunters Point Library in Long Island City, which took nearly a decade to build and cost more than $41 million, violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While the library opened in September to praise from architecture critics for its innovative design, visitors immediately criticized the building's third level fiction section, accessible only by stairs.
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October 7, 2019

Hunters Point Library will move fiction shelves in response to accessibility criticism

Steven Holl's Hunters Point Library has garnered glowing architectural reviews since it's opening last month, but visitors quickly pointed out a critical issue with accessibility in the $41 million building. Although the library has an elevator, it doesn't stop at the fiction section which is tiered on three levels above the lobby and accessible only via stairs. In light of the criticism, a Queens Public Library official has announced that books in that section will be relocated to an accessible area of the library, as Gothamist reported.
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September 25, 2019

See inside Long Island City’s new public library designed by Steven Holl Architects

Despite standing just 82 feet tall, the new Hunters Point Library manages to stand out among its skyscraper neighbors on the Long Island City waterfront. The concrete structure, designed by Steven Holl Architects, officially opened to the public Tuesday, about two decades after officials proposed building a new Queens Public Library branch. The delays, and the whopping $40 million price tag, appear to have been worth it, as the building, with its carved windows and incredible skyline views, continues to garner approval from top architecture critics.
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August 23, 2019

Steven Holl-designed Hunters Point Library to finally open next month

The long-awaited Hunters Point Library will open in Long Island City next month, more than eight years after its futuristic design was revealed, library officials announced Thursday. Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the concrete building with carved windows sits on the East River and boasts sweeping Manhattan views. After many construction and financial delays, the library will officially open on September 24.
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April 26, 2016

Skyline Wars: As Queens Begins to Catch Up, A Look at the Towers Defining Its Silhouette

Carter Uncut brings New York City’s latest development news under the critical eye of resident architecture critic Carter B. Horsley. Here, Carter brings us his sixth installment of “Skyline Wars,” a series that examines the explosive and unprecedented supertall phenomenon that is transforming the city’s silhouette. In this post Carter looks at the new towers defining the Queens skyline. For a long time, the glass tower erected by Citibank was the lone skyscraper of note in Queens. Known initially as Citicorp at Court Square, it was built in 1989 and designed by Raul de Armas of SOM as a blue-green metal-panel-and-glass office tower with just a few setbacks at its 633-foot-high top—an extremely clean-cut, modern obelisk of fine proportions. In a 1988 article in The New York Times, Anthony DePalma wrote that the tower “dominates the Queens skyline like a sequoia in the desert” and Paul Goldberger, then the newspaper’s architecture critic, wrote the tower was “rapidly becoming one of the most conspicuous structures in the entire city.” He added, “It is a very unlikely thing, this building—no other skyscraper in New York is remotely like the Citicorp tower, not so much for its design as for the fact that it stands free, alone in this landscape of gas stations, warehouses and row houses,” The bank tower transformed “the landscape of New York” and “no longer does Manhattan virtually by itself control the skyline,” Mr. Goldberger continued. “Skyscrapers built at random all over New York would be devastating, but an occasional exclamation point, well designed and carefully placed, will do the skyline no grievous harm,” he concluded. This is a very important but also very controversial point as currently evidenced in Manhattan where traditional precincts are being pin-pricked to exhaustion and confusion by supertalls.
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