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[[image - The Schomburg Center]]

[[image]] 
[[caption]] Arthur Shomburg, intaglio portrait (1928) by A. A. Smith - Chomburg Center[[/caption]]

[[image - woman wearing large glasses, smiling]]

Arthur A. Schomburg was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 24, 1874. He spent much of his life working to disprove a teacher's remark that "the Negro had no history." Having been educated mainly in Puerto Rico, he left for New York in 1891, and he was soon teaching in the Central Evening High School. In 1896 Schomburg joined the Bankers Trust Company where he worked for over twenty years, all the time continuing to search for his lost heritage.

From 1904 he wrote hundreds of articles, speeches, and letters to the editor relating to the Black experience. In 1915 he helped found the Negro Society for Historical Research and seven years later was elected President of the Negro Academy. By this time he had become well-known among rare book dealers everywhere. John Edward Bruce, scholar and activist W.E.B. DuBois, and Countee Cullen were among the friends who dropped by to peruse his growing collection of Black cultural treasures. When it came to The New York Public Library in 1926, it was one of the most important such private collections in the world: he had gathered over 5,000 volumes, 3,000 manuscripts, 2,000 etchings and portraits, and several thousand pamphlets. The next year he was honored with the NAACP's Walter Spingarn Medal.

After serving as Curator of Fisk University Library's new Negro Collection, Mr. Schomburg returned to New York in 1932 to head The New York Public Library's Division containing his collection. His work of fostering that collection continued until his death at 64 on June 10, 1938.

Arthur Alfonso Schomburg's legacy to future generations is the irreplaceable treasures in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

The New Building

The Schomburg Center's new home, the five-story red-brick building designed by Bond, Ryder & Associates, runs along Lenox Avenue between 135th and 136th Streets. On entering the building one is struck by an immediate feeling of openness, with views from the First Floor through interior windows down to the Ground Floor's octagonal Main Reading Room (reminiscent of African round houses) - a second research room on that floor is for microform use and for individual listening to recordings transmitted from a remote audio-visual studio. On the Second Floor is the elegant special collections reading room of the Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Archives Section with its panelled walls of Sapele wood from Nigeria and, what is most improtant, the archival stacks and vaults that at last give full protection to the priceless documents and manuscripts of Black history and literature. The arts and artifacts collection is cared for on the floor above and on top of the building is the main part of the general stacks, which can be double-decked as the collection grows. A sculpture garden and amphitheatre for plays and other outdoor events occupy the space between the new building and Countee Cullen Branch and the old Schomburg 135th Street building. We look forward to the further growth of the Schomburg Center in its new home and to continuing its traditions of service.

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