The four corners of the flagpole seem to symbolize the virtues of the western world before the onset of World War I, but in fact the totems north and south of the library facade were installed at the eve of World War II, when they may have seemed as both hallowed and dated as today, yet remain the type of ideas that sent explorers cleaving the waves of the Atlantic to colonize lands where civilizations of peoples had inhabited for thousands of years: “Conquest,” represented by a sword; “Discovery,” represented by a globe; “Adventure,” by the ship Argo; and “Civilization,” by a topless female holding a book. The whole structure rests on the backs of four turtles, which reference creation myths of the Lenni Lenape, who dwelled in Manhattan long long long before Director-General Peter Syuyvesant, or his successor, Rudolph Giuliani.