New York has been roiled with closures of cultural institutions since the effort to stop the coronavirus kicked into high gear last week.

But for a certain kind of New Yorker, the news on Friday that the New York Public Library would be closing the soaring Rose Main Reading Room in its 42nd Street flagship — along with its 91 other locations across Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx — at least until April 1 caused a special kind of sadness and alarm.

The Rose reading room, lined with two levels of bookshelves and huge arched windows overlooking Bryant Park, is one of the great spaces of New York. It’s a Grand Central Terminal for the bookish, complete with (in more ordinary times) crowds of tourists snapping photos from a designated zone near the entrance.