Behind every billionaire there is a story!

Schwarzman gives $100 million to the N.Y. public library

The New York Public Librarys venerable lion-guarded building on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street is to be renamed for the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, who has agreed to jump-start a $1 billion expansion of the library system with a guaranteed $100 million of his own.

The project, to be announced on Tuesday, aims to transform the Central Library into a destination for book borrowing as well as research. The Mid-Manhattan branch, on the east side of Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, will be sold and its circulating collection absorbed into the new space.

read the rest published by NY Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/arts/design/11expa.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=blackstone&st=nyt&oref=slogin