From my new book, a photo of the Local History & Genealogy room in the New York Public Library, a room where Lovecraft spent many evenings reading a reference-only book on the history of Providence.

Above: Local History and Genealogy room (No. 328) of the New York Public Library. Picture: Handbook of The New York Public Library, 1916. Public Domain.

Possibly this is the sort of “small genealogical reading-room” that Lovecraft had in mind when writing “The Dunwich Horror” just a few years later in 1928…

“The building was full of a frightful stench which Dr Armitage knew too well, and the three men rushed across the hall to the small genealogical reading-room whence the low whining came. For a second nobody dared to turn on the light, then Armitage summoned up his courage and snapped the switch. One of the three — it is not certain which — shrieked aloud at what sprawled before them among disordered tables and overturned chairs. […] The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was not quite dead, but twitched silently and spasmodically while its chest heaved in monstrous unison with the mad piping of the expectant whippoorwills outside. Bits of shoe-leather and fragments of apparel were scattered about the room…” — “The Dunwich Horror”.

One wonders if the nature of this creature’s depiction was perhaps even Lovecraft’s literary revenge on some particularly annoying phlegmy and wheezing old cougher, such as he might have once had to endure in the room at the New York Public Library?

Here’s another picture, unused in the book, which depicts another typical scene from the New York Public Library in the early years of the 20th century…

Picture: New York Public Library Flickr Commons stream.

This is what the exterior/entrance looked like, as painted by Tavik Frantisek Simon in 1927…