San Antonio College Library

Visitors to the New York Public Library's main reading room are not likely to gaze enraptured at ornamental moldings, cherubs and vast, uninterrupted ceilings as they cope with poor lighting, uncomfortable chairs and often slow service. Reed's room-by-room architectural tour, a panegyric to the Fifth Avenue building, asks us to believe it is "a people's palace," even though its ornate turn-of-the-century style modeled on classical Paris and Rome has...