Characters of the Village

Frank Collerius – Jefferson Market Library Manager

By Brian and Joy Pape

We love visiting our local libraries. We recently donated some of our books and the service was special. We wanted to thank the New York Public Library with an interview, so we tracked down the manager, Frank Collerius, at the Jefferson Market Library branch located in the magnificent former courthouse built in 1874-1877 at West 10th Street and Sixth Avenue. Here’s our interview with Collerius.

What is your favorite thing about your job?
There is no such thing as one favorite thing! I love being the manager and facilitator of a beautiful, free space for people to read and pursue their thoughts and dreams. One of the things I love is the classes we offer to the public for free. We engage professors from neighboring educational institutions to teach classes at the library. I found a lot of professors very passionate about their work and they like teaching here because of our extraordinarily diverse public.

We currently offer an Italian language class which has been super popular. These classes give me joy. In class, one can hear laughing and names being exchanged. The classes combine community spirit and sociability along with the important result of learning new skills while engaging with an expert.

If I’m at the desk at the end of the day and people are leaving, often they will say “thank you” to me. This show of gratitude is lovely – and I thank them right back! To fulfill the need for engagement and connection with people is extraordinarily satisfying.

What is your least favorite thing about your job?
The best part is the people ─ both staff and public! New York is a big, beautiful place and serving such a diverse array of people can be challenging – a challenge the library meets! We want to serve people’s needs. For example, accessibility has been vastly improved thanks to the recent renovation and that changes people’s lives for the better. I am grateful the Village has always been so supportive of the library.

Where were you brought up?
I grew up on Long Island and my parents were from Brooklyn. I have lived in New York City ever since college.

What is your relationship with the Village?
I didn’t, at least consciously, plan on making my life in the Village but I went to The New School because I wanted to go to a small liberal arts school in New York City. Now I love seeing The New School students come in every year, getting cards when they first come to the city. These connections between different phases of life is wonderful and show how we’re connected to the Village in different ways.

Then I started working for the New York Public Library. I love the library and wanted to work everywhere and anywhere. I worked all over the system ─ in the Bronx, the Upper East Side, Midtown, and eventually here as the manager in Greenwich Village when I applied for this position in 1999. Our library endeavors to meet people where they are. We have print and e-books and e-audiobooks. We want to give them the reading experience that they want to experience!

You spoke about the beauty of the building, both outside and in. You were the manager when it went through that most recent upgrade for accessibility and other improvements.
This library is a beautiful example of preservation and adaptive reuse. The building was converted into a library because the public was very active and determined to save it from demolition in 1958 when there weren’t any landmark protections (it was landmarked in 1969). This is a very important story and Jefferson Market’s archive contains a great deal of material delineating the activists’ progress in saving the building.

Do you know of Charles Booth? He did the stained glass for the building as well as for the Brooklyn Historical Society and other places. I think that’s why I take what happens inside the library so seriously ─ how we arrange the reading rooms and all the programs we offer. We feel responsible to meet the expectation on the inside because of what we look like on the outside.

What was it like for you at the beginning of the pandemic?
We were undergoing that renovation during the pandemic. When we reopened in 2022, we found a diverse public eager for free public space and a desire to read and engage with the librarians.

What is your favorite restaurant in the Village?
Gene’s Restaurant, an old Village institution, is a block away from the library and three blocks away from where I live and I love it.

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Brian J. Pape is a citizen architect and artist, serving on the Waterfront Code Committee (2023-26), writing NYC’s first Building Code for its 520 miles of shoreline. He served 8 years on Manhattan District 2 Community Board (Executive Committee, Landmarks Committee, State Liquor Authority Committee, Quality of Life and Outdoor Dining Group). He has been a leading pioneer of ‘solar’, ‘Passive House’, healthy interiors, LEED-AP “Green” and Historic Preservation architecture specialities, and is an active member of the American Institute of Architects. He is a journalist specializing in architecture and urban subjects, co-founder of the newsmagazine VillageView.NYC