To reclaim Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College, Stanford White’s most dazzling extant structure in New York, its admirers must invent new uses for a building that was intended by a much different institution — New York University — to serve a now-antiquated form of scholarship, using riches of which the community college could only dream.

Under the chairmanship of Samuel G. White (Stanford’s great-grandson) and the day-to-day leadership of Michael Parley, a group called Save Gould Memorial Library will advise on the study of conditions in the largely empty, little-used 116-year-old building; help estimate what it would cost to repair and preserve it; and then set out to raise a sum that may need to be $50 million or more.

That’s a daunting task. In fact, it may be impossible. But it’s certainly worth trying.

“If you enhance the environment, people will be more likely to come here to learn,” Thomas A. Isekenegbe, the president of Bronx Community College, said.