Aguilar Branch, NYPL, 1928.

The Aguilar Free Library was a library structure built between 1898 and 1899 in an Art Nouveau style by the architecture firm Herts & Tallant. The firm was well-known for their work on theaters. Largely funded through the philanthropic support of Grace Aguilar, a popular British novelist and essayist of Sephardic Jewish descent, the Free Library merged with NYPL in 1903.

In 1904 the same architecture firm extensively renovated (and nearly tripled in size) the original building. Funded by the Carnegie bequest the new library had an exaggerated classical style with two massive columns flanking the three-story facade. This feature and the iron and glass structure that fills in most of the rest of the facade, this branch is distinctive among the Carnegie libraries.