The New York Public Library. Look at those lions.
Patience and Fortitude. That's what they're called now. But when they were unveiled in nineteen eleven, they were called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox — after the library's founders. At one point, one was considered female and called Lady Astor. Her brother was Lord Lenox. It took the Great Depression to give them better names. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia renamed them Patience and Fortitude — the qualities he said New Yorkers needed to survive the economic crisis. And the names stuck.
They're carved from pink Tennessee marble — the same stone used in the Lincoln Memorial. Sculptor Edward Clark Potter designed them, but six Tuscan brothers — the Piccirillis, working out of a studio in the Bronx — did the actual carving. Potter got paid eight thousand dollars for the design. The brothers got five thousand for both lions. Combined.
Also — and this is delightful — Teddy Roosevelt lobbied HARD for bison instead of lions. He wanted American animals
. Bison, elk, moose. He was overruled. And I think we can all agree that Patience and Fortitude the Bison would be a very different vibe.
Now. The building itself. When it opened on May twenty-third, nineteen eleven, it was the largest marble structure in the United States. Three hundred and seventy-five thousand square feet. It took sixteen years to build and came in at nine million dollars — mo
