the Library's "jewel in the crown". The first item called for was Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded by Delia Bacon, although this was a publicity stunt, and the book was not in the Main Branch's collection at the time. The first item actually delivered was N. I. Grot's ("Ethical Ideas of Our Time"), a study of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy. The reader filed his slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book seven minutes later. The Beaux-Arts Main Branch was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States, with shelf space for 3.5 million volumes spread across . The projected final cost was $10 million, excluding the cost of the books and the land, representing a fourfold increase over the initial cost estimate of $2.5 million. The structure ultimately cost $9 million to build, over three times as much as originally projected. Because there were so many visitors during the first week of the Main Branch's opening, the New York Public Library's directors initially did not count the number of visitors, but guessed that 250,000 patrons were accommodated during the first week. The construction of the Main Branch, along with that of the nearby Grand Central Terminal, helped to revitalize Bryant Park. 20th-century growth The Main Branch came to be regarded as an architectural landmark. As early as 1911, Harper's Monthly magazine praised the architecture of "this interesting and important building". In 1971, New York Times architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote, "As urban planning, the library still suits the city remarkably well" and praised its "gentle monumentality and knowing humanism". Architectural historian Kate Lemos wrote in 2006 that the library "has held a commanding presence at the bustling corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue as the neighborhood grew up around it". The Main Branch also took on importance as a major research center. Norbert Pearlroth, who served as a researcher for the Ripley's Believe It or Not! book series, perused an estimated 7,000 books annually from 1923 to 1975. Other patrons included First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; writers Alfred Kazin, Norman Mailer, Frank McCourt, John Updike, Cecil Beaton, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and E. L. Doctorow; actors Helen Hayes, Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish, Diana Rigg, and Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco; playwright Somerset Maugham; film producer Francis Ford Coppola; journalists Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Tom Wolfe; and boxer Joe