The view from the Reading Room in the Library Hotel is of Madison Avenue and includes The New York Public Library. The room, below, is a gathering spot for book lovers at the hotel, which has themed rooms lined with specially selected volumes. Most requested: the erotic literature room.

MCT / Scott Naugle

NEW YORK Question: If a bibliophile were to book a vacation and not care to stray but a few feet after arrival, where would he go?

Answer: The intersection of East 41st Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. He would walk on Library Way, reading the author plaques embedded in the sidewalk every few feet, salute the grandiose New York Public Library on the next block, revel in the rare manuscript collection at the Pierpont Morgan Library a few steps to the left, and sleep in the solitude of a book-lined room at The Library Hotel.

Both serendipity and planning intersected to create these few blocks of book bliss. The Pierpont Morgan Library formed in 1902, construction on The New York Public Library was completed in 1911, The Library Hotel opened in August 2000, and in 2004 Library Way was dedicated to connect all points bookish.

AT EAST 41ST and Madison, where the sidewalks bear the daily pounding of thousands of soles swept forward by the surge of commerce, The Library Hotel is a civilizing oasis of comfort and care. Vacant for six years, the former office building, constructed in the 1920s, was renovated into a boutique hotel of 60 rooms. The thin, 14-story building crouches discreetly beside hulking, fat office towers that scratch the clouds and hold hundreds of weary cubicles.

Within the hotel, floor and room numbers are dispensed with and replaced by Dewey Decimal System code. Following the traditional library cataloging system, each of the 10 floors corresponds to one of the 10 categories originated by Melvil Dewey. Floors are devoted to math and science, technology, philosophy and literature, among others. Upon each floor are sub-classifications.

On the religion floor, room number 1200.005 is devoted to Native American culture and spirituality. The titles on the bedside floor-to-ceiling shelves include Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen and Southern Cheyenne Women’s Songs by Virginia Giglio. A colorful print of a Native American topped with a war bonnet adorns the street side wall between two large windows. The room is fresh, as if appointed yesterday, with custom woodwork wrapping the built-in desk and armoire.

“Our most requested room is erotic literature on the eighth floor,” said Director of Sales and Marketing Yogini Patel with a demure grin. “And the fairy tale room is popular with kids.”

AS THE HOTEL’S honorary librarian, Patel’s duties include managing its collection of 6,000 books and stocking the guest rooms with reading material appropriate to the room’s theme. “The books are here to be read. Take one when you leave and mail it back when you are done.” The good manners are as ubiquitous as the abundance of reading material.

The Reading Room on the second floor overlooks Madison Avenue and The New York Public Library. Stocked throughout the day and evening with refreshments, the tables and comfortable chairs evoke the personality of a prim, yet congenial Periodicals Room in a small-town library. Daily papers are available. On a given evening, the room fills and flows with comers and goers. At the table to the right, the conversation may be of Joyce; across the way, of Germany’s early history. The cultured civility is contagious. The light, warm-toned carpet and polished wood trim quickly defuse any lingering stress.

A subtle achievement of The Library Hotel is the aura of silence, a firm quiet, and the essential ingredient without which a library is defrocked of its credentials. The New York City racket, including the jazz of annoyed cabbie horns, is muted within these walls.

Along East 41st in front of the hotel is Library Way, an initiative that implanted 96 bronze plaques in the sidewalk to celebrate renowned authors and their words. The former New York City resident and essayist turned Maine farmer E.B.White is memorialized with this witticism, “I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”

Library Way may be followed to Patience and Fortitude, the two lions guarding the entrance of The New York Public Library. Inside are 88 miles of shelves, an extensive rare book and map collection and a glass case enclosing one of the few extant Guttenberg Bibles. Its iconic Reading Room, a football field-size area holding hundreds of seats, dozens of tables, and comfortably lighted by specially designed table lamps, is home to students, writers and researchers.

Even sidewalk peddling is different here. On a warm day this summer, a bookseller with a folding table and a selection of 30 or so new books plied his trade on the sidewalk of East 41st, as Patience and Fortitude stood silent guard.