First Month as an NYPL Cullman Fellow * Photo/Description Journal

From my first mornings entering the New York Public Library as the 2025-26 Jean Strouse Fellow in the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, I knew it would be a very happy year! Perhaps it was the five months away in so many new situations—MacDowell, Yaddo, San Francisco—learning to bumble about with Moses, that made it possible for me to embrace the challenge of the giant building with joy. Here are pics and vids from September 2025 including our usually-crowded empty second floor, some treasures from special collections, the book-delivery train, my happy self in front of my little office, and more. I took the videos using my Ray-Ban Meta Glasses and the photos with Be My AI (sometimes with the assistance of Cullman friends to get a good framing). The exception is the photo of me by my office that Alabaster took during my second week. Image and video description by AI.

Outside NYPL

(the Establishing Shot)

I took this on the morning of day 2, September 3! I’m not thrilled with the Piccibot description, which refused to recognize this as the New York Public Library or mention the lions, but it does give a sense of the fact that I do a 360…

 

Video description – Starts with the view of a gray stone wall and a green lawn with a tree and bushes. The camera moves to the entrance of a building with white walls, arches, and columns. A poster can be seen on the side. The shot then pans out, showing a wide area. There are stairs, stone statues and people walking about. Tall buildings can be seen in the background. The camera pans again showing an intersection. People cross the crosswalk and a white truck is driving down the street. The camera pans again to show stores and tall buildings. There is a street sign on a post and red paint markings on the crosswalk.

Walking the Empty Halls

Usually our second-floor hallway is brimming with tourists and patrons and brides getting photos on the stairs, but on this second morning before the library opens, I’m nearly alone…

Video description – Shows a long, empty hallway in a library. The walls are made of light-colored, marble-like stone. On the left, there’s a dark wood door.  There are framed paintings on both sides of the hallway, and several decorative black metal gates.  As the camera moves down the hallway, it passes by a white stone bench. The hallway is lit by round hanging lights. At the end of the hall, there’s an archway, through which you can see a desk and chairs.

Entering the Cullman Center

Video description – Starts with a shot of a wooden door with a “Staff Only” sign. It moves to show a long hallway with arched ceilings and a polished floor. The walls are made of light-colored stone, and there are pendant lights. Further down the hall, there is a staircase. The shot then returns to the wooden door, now showcasing it up close and in full detail. The door leads to the “Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.” The video shows the door again from a different angle. It seems the speaker needs their card and goes to open the door.

Note that I not only open the door in this video, but also take you all the way to my little office, with a few books already on my shelf!

Me at My Office Door

Image description – A woman standing in a doorway, smiling, and holding a white cane. She has long brown hair and is wearing dark sunglasses, a black jacket, a black dress with a textured hem, and black knee-high boots. She also has a blue lanyard and several items attached to her belt, such as keychains and pouches. The office space behind her has wooden furniture and shelves. She appears happy and confident. By Be My AI.

The Book Train

On our tour of the library, we got a peek at the underground stacks—two floors that stretch under Bryant Park all the way to Sixth Ave—and met the book train that carries requested items up to the famous Rose Main reading Room on the third floor…

Video description – Opens on a long, bright hallway with machinery on the right and left sides. The wall on the right has several large, white, rectangular panels with pipes and other metallic fixtures running along the ceiling. A piece of machinery labeled “ClimateCraft” is visible. Two individuals in casual clothing are walking away from the camera, down the hallway towards the end of the tunnel. Above the machinery is a series of small, red and white objects with the numbers 21-32. The camera moves down the hallway, pointing toward the red and white objects, and then towards the ceiling. More pipes and fixtures are visible on the ceiling.

Rare Books

Illuminated Arabic Manuscript

Near the reading rooms on the third floor, you’ll find the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division. I just had my first research visit—poking around nineteenth-century muckraker Jacob Riis’s personal papers—but on this intro visit (September 8), we snapped a photo of this beautiful Medieval Arabic text…

Image description – An open manuscript rests on red felt under soft library light, its pages thick and yellowed with centuries. The right page glows with an intricate square of gold illumination bordered in blue and red filigree, dense Arabic script flowing in tight dark lines, framed by a radiant geometric sunburst seal. Crimson marginalia curve like whispered commentary along the edges. Opposite, a faded sheet of rose-colored paper partially covers the left page, weighed down by a loose coil of white cord. The air feels hushed, dust-sweet, like the breath of old vellum and polished oak.

Berg Collection

I did not know anything about the Henry W. and Albert A Berg Collection of English and American Literature, casually referred to as the “Berg Division” until our visit on September 20. It was such a delight to be introduced to its varied bits of material culture…

Charlotte Bronte’s Portable Writing Desk

I asked ChatGPT to describe not only what it looks like, but also what it might feel like—in about 200 words…

Image description – The object is a small wooden writing box, rectangular and hinged open to reveal a soft plum-colored velvet interior. The box sits on a polished wooden library table, its reddish-brown grain catching warm light. Brass hinges and lock plates gleam faintly at the edges, a little tarnished with age. The velvet panels form a sloped writing surface divided by a central seam, where the lid folds shut. At the top edge are small compartments: a narrow drawer with a round brass pull, a square ink well with a circular brass lid, and another tiny open cubby that might once have held pens or nibs.

To the touch, the outer wood would feel smooth but slightly ridged with its grain, cool where varnish remains thick, and faintly waxy with polish. The velvet inside would feel plush but worn—thin in places, maybe even threadbare—offering a mix of softness and resistance under the fingers. The brass fittings would be cool and solid, grounding the more delicate textures. Together, the box suggests a tactile invitation to writing: the weight of history in wood and metal, balanced by the softness where hand and paper once met.

I asked a follow-up question about the coolness of varnish vs. wood…

When I said *“cool where varnish remains thick,”* I meant that varnished wood often feels a little cooler to the touch than bare wood. The reason has to do with **how different materials conduct heat** from your skin: **Wood** is a natural insulator — it traps air in its fibers and doesn’t conduct heat well. So when you touch unfinished or worn wood, it tends to feel closer to *skin temperature*, almost neutral or even slightly warm. Varnish or polish**, on the other hand, is usually made from resin or oil-based compounds that create a smooth, dense surface. These materials conduct heat better than porous wood, so they **pull warmth from your fingers more quickly**. That small transfer of heat makes them feel *cooler*, even though they’re actually at the same room temperature. It’s the same reason a **metal doorknob feels colder** than a **wooden one** in the same room: metal conducts heat away fastest, varnish does so a little, and unfinished wood hardly at all. So on that writing box, the thicker patches of varnish—especially where hands didn’t wear it away—would register as subtly cooler and smoother under the fingertips.

Thoreau’s Blooming Ledger Pages

Here are two ledger pages in the hand of Henry David Thoreau: The Flowering of Plants, accidentally observed in ’51, with considerable care in ’52. I remembered the curator mentioning its usefulness to environmental researchers, and this is what ChatGPT said on the matter: “It is noted for its historical record of bloom-times (spring of 1851 vs 1852) and has been used by environmental historians and scientists to compare past phenology with current trends under global-warming pressures. (NYPL Archives)

Image description – Two cream ledger leaves, each ruled into columns. The leftmost column lists Latin plant names; the next columns carry brief notes and many dates (mostly in May), with X/XX ticks in the margin—likely presence or bloom checks. The paper seems rag-content: thin, slightly wavy, edges softened. Ink ranges blue-black to brown; some entries are crossed out. Under a fingertip you’d feel a faint bite from the nib where pressure was heavy, occasional shine where ink pooled, and a very slight ridge at folds.

Top sheet — left column (legible entries): Viola blanda, [Veronica officinalis], Aquilegia canadensis, Dicentra canadensis, [Rhododendron/Rhodora…], Fragaria virginiana, [— amplexicaulis], Myrica cerifera, Salix alba, Potentilla fruticosa (crossed out), Prunus [americana?]…

Nabokov’s Butterflies

Not too long ago I read Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory, where I learned that as a boy he’d dreamed of being a lepidopterist, So his drawings of butterflies did not come as a complete surprise, but are thrilling nonetheless…

Image description – Four sheets of delicate paper lie on the table under warm library light, each bearing a meticulously hand-drawn butterfly wing. The wings are mapped with grids and numbered cells, some shaded in graphite, others painted in vivid yellows, ochres, and deep blues. Marginal notes in neat scientific script annotate each pattern—measurements, venation, perhaps the taxonomy of species observed. The drawings rest beside a typed card marked “Berg Collection, New York Public Library.” Together they suggest an artist-naturalist’s precision, a mind balancing beauty and classification. The air seems to hum faintly, as if these pinned fragments might flutter again.

From Kerouac’s Drawer

Jack Kerouac’s family basically dumped the contents of his desk drawer into a box and gave it to the library when he died in 1969, aged forty-seven, from cirrhosis and internal bleeding linked to years of heavy drinking.

Image description – A white archival box sits open on a polished wooden table, its contents neatly but loosely arranged. Along the back edge lie a silver pocket watch with a black leather fob, a rectangular Gillette razor tin patterned in black and cream, and a small tan eyeglass case. In front, a curved wooden pipe, red-framed spectacles, and a brown wallet nestle beside a green *La Romule* cigarette carton and a rosary of dark wooden beads. A “Blood Type O” tag and folded paper matchbooks rest among them. Each object glints or dulls under warm brass lamplight, forming an accidental still-life.

 

*My first month also brought me face to face with Valentin Haüy’s Essai in NYPL Treasures! Read about that HERE*