This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.

John Fiedler had a better deal than most New York City superintendents.

He was the first super for the New York Public Library, Main Branch,

the famous Schwartzman building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Their backyard was Bryant Park.

A 1913 article in the New York Times noted that before moving into the library,

Fiedler had worked as a merchant man, dabbled in prize fighting, and studied engineering at Harvard.

Notably, the 1913 article focused on his new invention, an air purifier that promised to suck

everything from arsenic to iron particles out of the air.

Our audience loved Kristen O'Donnell Tubbs' wonderful story from her historical fiction book,

John Lincoln Clem, Civil War drummer boy. So we asked if she would share another story with us.

Here she is telling the story of the family that lived in the

New York Public Library. Once upon a time, a girl was born inside a library. And not just any

library, the New York Public Library. Yep, the big famous building on 5th and 42nd, the one with the

lions out front. The date was May 8th, 1917. Two French dignitaries happened to be visiting

the library that week, Prime Minister René Viviani and Marshall Joseph Jopra.

The girl's parents were stumped for a name for their daughter and a guest at the party suggested

combining these two dignitaries' names.

And so the girl born inside the NYPL became Viviani, Joffra, Fiedler.

Viviani was the first daughter and third child of John and Cornelia Fiedler. John Fiedler was hired

as the building superintendent when the iconic library was under construction.

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