ARCH162

James Lennox, born 1800 and died 1880, was the richest man in the 19 th  century, because he was the most influential philanthropist and bibliophile. Being one of the earliest buildings to open to all of the public, the Lenox Library was a full collection of over eighty-five thousand books. Originally, these books resided at James Lenox’s house in his personal collection on the corner of fifth and twelfth street where he lived in large piles of collections that he collected since 1845. It was mainly books that James Lenox collected for his collections, but on the side he also liked to dip his foot into the world of fine art and sculptures. As James Lenox became older this system of managing books became less and less reliable as it was hard to find books in stacks and stacks, and so he began looking towards the decision to build a house for his collections. He chose a site in which he had inherited from his father in eighteen thirty-nine and decided this was t...