Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), “Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey”

The Library Walk, is a venture launched in 1996 by the New York Public Library, Grand Central Partnership and New Yorker Magazine, in which are embedded in bronze plaques quotes from well-known books, or those dealing with books and literature. The panels designed by artist Gregg LeFevre were laid in 1998 from the New York Public Library building along 41st Street.

The plaque contains a quote from the letter of the Third President of the United States Thomas Jefferson to Colonel Charles Yancey”

Jefferson, also known as the author of the United States Declaration of Independence, noted in a letter written to his neighbor on January 6, 1816, the importance of freedom of the press.

The quote appears in the background of a newspaper page, and on the front pages of a selection of popular newspapers that have all been published in New York: The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal, New York - Amsterdam News, New York Daily News, The New York Times, New York Tribune, New York Journal, The World, The New York Globe, The Sun, The Herald, New York Evening Post (New York Post), The Commercial Advertiser , The American Minerva, The New York Weekly Journal, and the head of a newspaper from 1744 (President Jefferson’s era) The New-York Weekly Post-Boy.