The Tiffany Reading Room

         In 2004, the Board of Trustees of Irvington Public Library formed a committee to restore the reading room in Town Hall, one of the few remaining interiors by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the world-famous artist, decorator and glassmaker.

         Louis Tiffany was the son of Tiffany & Co. founder Charles Lewis Tiffany, a long-time resident of both New York City and Irvington, who owned an estate on the site of the present Matthiessen Park. Charles Tiffany was trustee of the village Mental and Moral Improvement Society, which donated the property on which the Town Hall was built, with the provision that the building include a free reading room that would be open to the public in perpetuity.

     Once restored to its place as the crown jewel of Town Hall, the Tiffany Reading Room will be one of Irvington’s richest resources and one that sets the village apart from every other community in America.  Like another Tiffany interior, the Veteran’s Room of the Seventh Regiment Armory in Manhattan, it will attract people simply by virtue of its beauty. But unlike the Armory interior, the reading room will be a public space, open to anyone who cares to use and enjoy it. That was the vision of Charles Tiffany and his fellow trustees, a vision manifested by Louis Tiffany with an interior at once poetic and functional.

Window with Hudson River Landscape from Rochroane, 1905, by Louis Comfort Tiffany
Commissioned by Melchior Beltzhoover for his Gothic-revival mansion in Irvington.
Courtesy of the Corning Museum of Glass

The Tiffany Room Committee

Ellenor Alcorn, co-chair; Deborah Flock, co-chair*; Michael John Burlingham,
Barbara Denyer, Heather Kenny**, John Malone**, Christopher Mitchell*, Peter K. Oley, Jan Seidler Ramirez, Susan Robinson, Larry Schopfer**, Agnes Sinko, Pam Strachan.


Fundraising Committee

Susan Watson, chair*; Barbara Casey, Barbara Cohen, Barbe Crowley, Lisa Dente, Katherine Martucci, Mary Beth Merryman, Laura Midgley, Pam Wetherill, Betsy Wilson.

* serves on both committees
**ex-officio