The Finest Library in All New York

How I yearn to be sitting in a comfortable leather armchair in some hidden corner of that library!

Andrew, I think that the grandly-named London Library in St James’s Square, London, is at least the equal of your New York libraries. The London Library is a private library which can be joined by election and subscription. It is used by many writers and is a resource par excellence.
http://londonlibrary.co.uk/aboutus/index.htm

The London Library may be an equal or even superior to the University Club’s library in its collection, but certainly not in its beauty.

The LL has also ruffled many feathers in recent years over its exorbitant rate increases.

I agree with Alessandro! The University Club has a wonderful library, and as far as architecture and art the Morgan is a rival I think.

It was my cousin Arthur Willis Colton, Librarian of the club for many years, who made the library what it is today. His intention was to create a library for a club whose members were both gentlemen and scholars – he himself, whose ancestors had attended Yale from 1704, and whose own BA, MA, and PhD were all from that venerable institution, was certainly both.
As for the London Library, of which I have been a member for some 25 years: architecturally it offers nothing, and unapologetically, but as a resource for scholars it is unsurpassed in London, not least because the stacks are open and almost every single book can be checked out, and, if not required by another member, kept out for as long as one likes.

Surely the New York Public Library more than matches the University Club library.