The Collectors Club Moves Out of Its 90-Year Home
By Larry Haber, Collectors Club President
Originally published in the Philatelic Literature Review, Spring/Summer 2025 issue. Become a PLR subscriber today.
In 2023, the Collectors Club Board of Governors decided to sell its landmarked building. Located in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, on 35th Street, between Madison and Park avenues, the club called that location home for 90 years.
The exterior facade of the five-story building was a New York City landmark (Figure 1). While the interior was not designated a landmark, it was much loved by members and visitors alike. Many of our members had vivid memories of times spent within the club. There was a close personal, and, at times, emotional connection to the walls of the building.
Figure 1a. The exterior facade of the Collectors Club old clubhouse on 35th Street, designated a New York City landmark.
Figure 1b. The new home of the Collectors Club: 58 W. 40th St.
The building’s origins predate the club; it was extensively redesigned by Stanford White, one of the most renowned American architects. His client was J.P. Morgan’s art dealer, Thomas Clarke. The Morgan Library, once Morgan’s New York home, is around the corner from the old club. The White design was intended to serve as Clarke’s art gallery. The exterior and interior were designed to enhance the beauty found on the walls.
Despite the building’s beauty and appeal, the interior design and layout were awkward and difficult to navigate. The building featured two large rooms on each floor, front and back. The front room faced the street with a northern exposure while the south room overlooked an air shaft. A service corridor connected the large rooms, with the center of this corridor providing space for a beautiful curved stairway that granted access to each floor. Given the size of the floors and rooms, it was impossible to house the library within a single space inside the building. Instead, the library was distributed across four separate spaces on three floors.
The Collectors Club was founded in New York City in 1896. Its membership over the years has included American philately’s forefathers, such as John Luff, John W. Scott, Hiram Deats, Charles Mekeel, and more.
The clubhouse, at 58 W. 40th St., is open Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Library is staffed on Wednesdays and on meeting nights. The club recommends making arrangements in advance of a planned visit.
Visit www.collectorsclub.org for more information, or contact collectorsclub@collectorsclub.org.
As one entered the club, after walking up a small marble set of stairs, the main reading stacks were ahead of you. This area housed most of our books, which were stored in beautiful wooden cases, the fronts being framed glass French doors (Figure 2). Each door had a lock.
Figure 2. The 35th Street clubhouse's main reading stacks, located on the ground floor of the building. Courtesy of John Mug.
Two floors above, on the third floor, were two important areas for the library. Toward the rear, we housed most of our auction catalogs in the back room. In the front room, the Governors Room, the club’s rare books were stored inside locked wooden bookcases. Lacking sufficient space, this room also housed many auction catalogs, but truthfully, these were not necessarily arranged in a careful or easy-to-access manner.
The Collectors Club's enormous journal holdings were stored in the basement in movable, compact shelving. The building’s elevator did not service the basement floor; the only access was through a staircase. This was one of the many spaces in the building that were inaccessible to those with mobility issues.
Although the building was an architectural gem, the library’s layout and design were challenges we were forced to live with. We had to make the best of matters. The wooden bookcases were delightfully charming, but they prevented easy browsing. The width of the wood supporting the glass fronts and the locked doors impeded openness and ease of access. Most of the time, these French-doored bookcases were locked. This was not a library for browsing – or, at least, easy, casual browsing.
What were our goals for our new library?
First and foremost, we wanted the library to be a unified space. We did not want to perpetuate the chopped-up layout we used on 35th Street. We wanted a single library with books, journals, and catalogs close together. We wanted contiguous space.
We wanted the bookcases to maximize access and emphasize ease of browsing; no more closed doors in front of books and no locks and presenting a barrier.
Light is essential. We wanted the space to be well lit so readers could easily see any title toward the floor, not just those at eye level.
We also envisioned the library as a place to visit and socialize. We wanted the library to enhance our community of members and philatelists to further social engagement. In the old club, before our programs, people gathered in the main floor stacks area around two mismatched reading tables, where they caught up with each other, discussing philatelic and social matters. We wanted to retain that flavor.
So, it was essential that we have a large table in the center of the library as one enters the room. This would be a gathering place. We also ensured that the lighting for this table came from above. We did not want table lamps resting on the table. Very frequently, members would work on a stamp album in the library. Many stamp albums come in a large format, and having table lamps could impede ease of use or the lamp could be tipped over by accident. We wanted an open area with nothing dividing the space and cordoning off people.
While we appreciate and welcome community building, we also anticipated that people conducting research will want some private space separated from the coffee klatches at the big table. To that end, we wanted a set of work carrels where people could work in quiet solitude.
Several major omissions existed in the old library. One significant issue was the absence of power plugs for laptops and phones. Furthermore, although the wi-fi signal was strong in the main stacks area, it was, at best, unreliable in other parts of the library, particularly in the basement, where the journals were located, and in the third-floor area with the auction catalogs. Nor was there a suitable area to read, take notes, and conduct research in the basement journal section or the third-floor auction catalog area.
While there was a multi-purpose copier/scanner in the old library, it had a flat surface, making it unsuitable for books and awkward to use. We were committed to addressing all these issues with the new design.
Our old library's various deficiencies can explain our design choices and how they were implemented in the club’s new premises, 58 West 40th Street, on the mezzanine level (Figure 3).
Figure 3. The floor plan of the new library.
Library unification: The library has been unified, and all sections are now contiguous. It is no longer divided across floors. The shelves with the book collection seamlessly blend into the journal section, which connects smoothly to the auction catalog area (Figure 4). There is a dedicated room with movable compact shelving for journals and auction catalogs; this room is directly connected to the main stacks, making it a cohesive part of the entire library (Figure 5).
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Figure 4a. The new library, seen from the entrance, looking toward the back of the library.
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Figure 4b. The main library area, with a "quiet" space for the work carrels on the left.
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Figure 5. The compact shelving area, at the very back of the library.
A community hub: The library is designed to serve as a community hub. Upon entering, you will encounter a large table. This table caters to researchers and casual readers and provides a space for friends to gather and connect (Figure 6). Philately has a social aspect, and we aim to foster these connections.
Figure 6. View of the library with the "gathering" table in the foreground.
Access: The library, along with its books, journals, and catalog, is intended for reading, not for being locked away in a cabinet behind glass. All the shelving is open, easily accessible, and available for casual browsing. It is also well-lit. Proper lighting is essential. This is self-evidently true, but it needs to be emphasized.
Modern tech: We now have a section worktable with a computer, overhead scanner, printer, and flat-plate scanner, all available for library patrons. Power outlets are now plentiful and properly placed to be accessible, and the wi-fi signal is strong throughout the entire library.
Peace and quiet: Some readers and researchers want to be left alone, so the design includes a set of work carts.
So far, our discussion has focused on the physical issues that influenced our design. However, with the move, we faced a task we had never encountered.
Every book, journal, and auction catalog had to be taken off a shelf, wrapped, and placed into storage as we vacated 22 East 35th Street and fit out 58 West 40th Street. After moving into the 40th Street location, we needed to return these volumes to the shelves (Figure 7).
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Figure 7. Andrea Matura, the Collectors Club's executive secretary and librarian, overseeing the placement of books onto the shelves.
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Figure 7. Photo from the library's move.
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Figure 7. Workers move the Collectors Club's library.
Many of these books, journals, and catalogs had not been handled in years, and we had never had the opportunity to consider how to reorganize them in the library. It is not quite so much having the opportunity; instead, we were forced to make decisions. Since the new library would feature a different design, it compelled us to rethink how and where to position items.
We needed to make a strategic decision: Is the library an archive or a working library? The distinction affects what material we retain and how we display it on the shelves.
Should we retain material that is not otherwise available or accessible because it is of historical value or as a remnant of the past, with little to no present utility to the working philatelist? A working library, in contrast, designs its holdings around the requirements and needs of the working philatelic researcher.
One way to highlight this distinction is a sample question: Should the current edition of a popular stamp catalog be retained on its own or should we should also retain past editions of this catalog? The past editions may not be of current value to the philatelic researcher, but they once had value and they might have value as historical artifacts.
[Editor’s note: I recently went through all of the 1980-90s Scott catalogs to see what year a very specific change was made to a British stamp issue. However, I think it’s easy to see that this is not a frequent need, and that a philatelist needing to do this kind of research can contact a librarian at a location that has those older volumes, such as the APRL. – Susanna Mills]
In confronting this question, we also had to recognize certain realities. The club is located in Midtown Manhattan – the very definition of a high-priced neighborhood. Space comes at a premium.
We also recognized that others operate with a different cost structure. The American Philatelic Research Library comes to mind. There is an obvious cost differential between operations on 40th Street in Manhattan and Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
We also have a different mission than others. We are meant to serve our members directly, as working philatelists, conducting research. We realized that we are not meant to serve as a depository within the hobby. Hence, we are a working library and not an archive.
What this implies is that certain materials we held no longer would fit within our mandate. The first question that required resolution is the issue of what to do with our non-English language journal holdings. Back on 35th Street, the library had significant holdings of journals covering various topics. Many of these journals were not written in English but in a wide selection of foreign languages, primarily European, but not exclusively. These were transferred from the old library to storage and then retrieved.
We realized several realities. These journals sat on our shelves – likely for decades – without being used. Our population of library users is almost entirely monolingual. As an archive, the decision would be clear: retain these as important artifacts. Perhaps they should be retained if a Czech-speaking philatelist is searching for a Czech journal from 1938. However, as a working library, we could not justify keeping them. It makes no sense. Consequently, we have offered them to the APRL and the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum Library.
Once the archive-vs.-working-library issue was settled, other matters could be addressed. We come to the question of journal retention. In the pre-internet past, many journals contained little to no research. They were mainly devoted to stamp sale advertisements, basically, “stamps for sale” ads. As an archive, the decision would be straightforward: retain these. But as a working library, there is little value in consuming a scarce resource (space) to house this material.
There is another issue related to auction catalogs. Auction catalogs are a critical resource for researchers who wish to better understand the provenance of a stamp or cover. However, there were many sales catalogs comprised of sales of large lots with no photographs. These are of little practical value to us.
We have historically held these within the auction catalog section, filed by date. As we have all observed, many notable sales cover a single topic or country, usually as single-owner name sales. Consider the recent Gross or Erivan sales. These are frequently produced as magnificent volumes that are a joy to hold and read.
However, where to best place these grand catalogs? Do they belong with other auction catalogs, or are they better housed with books that cover the same type of material? We also understand that as long as the catalogs are recorded correctly in the David Straight Memorial Philatelic Union Catalog, the issue is perhaps academic, but we are also considering the user. We believe there is value in servicing the browsing user.
This helped clarify the best response: This type of auction catalog belongs with the books that cover the same territory as these sales volumes. These auction catalogs do much more than serve as a means of establishing provenance; they are excellent surveys of a philatelic area. They need to be viewed less as sales documents and more as the product of considerable philatelic research, and they should be placed where they are most likely to be used.
This brings me to another type of collection: our rare books.
Back on 35th Street, rare books were housed behind glass and under lock and key in the front room on the library’s third floor. The issue that arises is why we retain these. Why is there a rare book section if we position ourselves as a working library and not an archive? The answer is that there are no universal truths, and we inherently reserve the right to be occasionally self-contradictory. These volumes form an essential part of our history and are part of the legacy of donors and, as such, our legacy. At present, we are content to retain them.
The rare books are in a separate room right off the new library’s entrance. This small room is kept locked, but once inside, the material is visible on the shelves to the greatest degree. Some material is placed in archival boxes. We have an obligation to safeguard this material, but we are not interested in erecting further obstacles. Wherever possible, not only in the rare book section but throughout the entire library, we believe in accessibility.
As noted, once we made the move, the degree to which you could casually walk around the library and look at the titles was immensely improved. This is not only because of the open shelves but also because of the improved lighting.
As a result of our review of our materials, we came across another issue: we found that a set of journals titled “Journal of Chinese Philately” was filed in the “J” section, “J” for “Journal.” This made little sense. One might think that this didn’t matter, but to make matters worse, our journal holdings were not to be found in the catalog. Hence, buried in the wrong place and not indexed, it was as though they did not exist. We are correcting all these misfilings and look forward to uploading our journals in the catalog.
When we set out to move, we knew we would be dealing with architects, movers, and construction workers, but we did not think we would be prompted to consider some of the fundamental rationales for our library.
It has been quite a journey and one that has had its challenges.
You might question: Are we done? Not yet, and we’re not sure we will ever be done, but we are convinced we have a much friendlier library that is inviting and serves as a social and research center for philatelists. Our location is in the center of the largest city in the United States, close to all forms of transportation. We invite you to visit and form your own impression on how we have done.
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