Albertine occupies two floors of the Payne Whitney mansion on Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bookshop is devoted to writing from the French-speaking world, presented in French and in English translation. Its shelves bring together more than fourteen thousand contemporary and classic titles from thirty Francophone countries. The mansion was commissioned in 1902 and designed by Stanford White. Since 1952 it has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. When Albertine opened in 2014, Jacques Garcia designed its interior with the character of a private library. The upper floor serves as a reading room beneath a ceiling painted with constellations, stars and planets. Albertine is part of Villa Albertine and maintains a programme of readings, discussions and debates concerned with literature and cultural exchange. The reading room gives those events a permanent setting, while the bilingual shelves make work from across the Francophone world available to New York readers.
Upper East Side, New York, United States