The eighty-year-old building was showing its age and in need of major rehabilitation and upgrades. This reality brought the Board of Trustees to the controversial decision to sell the building and combine the library collection with that of the New York Public Library (NYPL). The building was sold to one of the tenants in November 2007, and the bulk of the collection was transferred to the NYPL's Irma & Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy, at the NYPL's Main Branch in September 2008.