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.
Tiffany Reading Room Circa 1990's |
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Once restored to its place as the crown jewel of Town Hall, the Tiffany Reading Room will be one of Irvingtons richest resources and one that sets the village apart from every other community in America. Like another Tiffany interior, the Veterans 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.
Tiffany Room Committee
Deborah Flock, co-chair; Christopher
Mitchell, co-chair; Ellenor Alcorn, Michael John Burlingham,
Barbara Denyer, Constance Kehoe*, Laura Lilienfield*, John
Malone, Susan Robinson, Larry Schopfer*, Agnes Sinko, Pamela
Strachan, Susan Watson.
* ex-officio