LIBRARY LIONS

Library Lions is the New York Public Library’s benefit dinner, held on a Monday evening in early November at seven o’clock in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street: cocktails in Astor Hall, dinner in the Rose Main Reading Room, and a programme at which the Library names five or six people from arts, culture, letters and scholarship as Library Lions and gives each a medal. The Young Lions take over Astor Hall afterward. It often falls in the same week as Election Day.

At its tenth anniversary, “The Library was lit by 4,000 candles”.

Patience and Fortitude

The building opened on 23 May 1911, to the design of Carrère and Hastings. Two lions of Tennessee marble, carved by the Piccirilli Brothers to a design by Edward Clark Potter, flank the steps to Fifth Avenue. They were first called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after the Library’s founders, then Lord Astor and Lady Lenox. In the 1930s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia named them Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities New Yorkers would need to come through the Depression. Patience sits to the south, Fortitude to the north, and the legend goes that they are placed so that readers may read “between the lions”.

The Library chooses its Lions each year. In its own words, it honours “several distinguished individuals for outstanding achievements in their respective fields of arts, culture, letters and scholarship”. Margaret Atwood, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nelson Mandela, Zadie Smith, Steven Spielberg, Gloria Steinem and Oprah Winfrey are among those it lists.

The tenth-anniversary benefit honoured John Hope Franklin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Martin Scorsese and Tom Stoppard. Six hundred and twenty guests had cocktails in Astor Hall and dinner in the main reading room on the third floor; five hundred more came to a dance in Astor Hall given by the Young Lions, the Library’s supporters in their twenties and thirties. The evening raised $2.6 million for the General Book Fund.

The pattern has held. In 2022 the Lions were Laurie Anderson, Mary Beard, Charles M. Blow, Lynn Nottage and Amartya Sen, with remarks from Senator Schumer and Mayor Adams. In 2023 four hundred and fifty guests heard a thirteen-piece orchestra in the reading room while Ina Garten, Khaled Hosseini, Bill T. Jones, David Nasaw and Steven Spielberg were honoured. In 2024, the year of Elizabeth Kolbert, Spike Lee, Jon Meacham, Suzan-Lori Parks and Amy Tan, Senator Schumer tore up his speech: “Well, I always listen to my wife.”

The Evening

Guests come up the steps between the lions and into Astor Hall for cocktails. Dinner is laid in the Rose Main Reading Room, and the programme is given there: the speeches, and a medal for each of the Lions. The money raised goes to the Library’s work across its ninety-two locations.

After dinner the Young Lions give their own party in Astor Hall, with dessert and dancing, and the dinner’s guests go down to it.

The speakers are many. The benefit often falls in the week of Election Day, and politicians come to it; Senator Schumer has spoken more than once. In 2025, on 3 November, the evening’s chair, Abby Milstein, said that “the new mayor will lead a city that loves its libraries”. Louise Erdrich, Daniel Kehlmann, James McBride, James Patterson, Shonda Rhimes and Bruce Springsteen were the Lions that year; Springsteen surprised the room by playing “Thunder Road” alone with a guitar, and the evening raised $3.4 million.

In 2026 the benefit is on Monday 2 November, at seven. The Library has named Joy Harjo, Stephen King, George Packer, Martha Stewart and Jesmyn Ward as Lions, and says that “The full class of 2026 Lions will be announced soon.”

What to Know

It is held on a Monday early in November; in 2026, on 2 November. The 2027 date has not been announced.

Places are taken through the Library itself, by table or by ticket, and the benefit office answers on 212.930.0972. Prices are not published.

Black tie. The Library publishes no code in its open pages, but the dinner is black tie and gowns in every account of it, and one ran under the headline “Black Tie and Books”.

The Library stands on Fifth Avenue at 41st and 42nd Streets, on the east side of Bryant Park, and its entrance is up the Fifth Avenue steps. For a member travelling from Washington or further, the Court finds a room within a short walk.

The mistake is to plan anything after it. It is the week of the elections, “there are a lot of speakers”, and the programme runs long.

The Court

Library Lions is not the Court’s own. A table, or places at one, is sought on a member’s behalf from the Library, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Midtown for those who come from out of town, and the table afterward. The Court is in Paris the following week for Paris Photo.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.