In May of 2014, the iconic Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library's Fifth Avenue branch began to fall apart. One of the decorative rosettes on the iconic ceiling came crashing to the floor in the middle of the night.

Thus began a $12.9 million restoration project to repair the ceiling, that includes reinforcing 180 rosettes with steel cables and removing asbestos. And while the Reading Room is closed, the library is using the opportunity to restore the mural in the adjacent catalog room.

All this work, however, has kept the rooms closed to the thousands of people who visit the library each year. In 2015, there were 2.5 million visits at the Main Library.

The library now says the rooms will reopen by late fall 2016, several months ahead of the prior scheduled opening in 2017.

WNYC's Richard Hake got an exclusive tour of the restoration project, climbing up several floors of scaffolding to examine the historic ceiling from just a few inches away.

The scaffolding, estimated to cost around $3 million of the price tag, is holding up a platform or false ceiling which allows workers to get close to the ceiling for restoration work.

(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

The long wooden reading tables and iconic brass lamps are still in place, but covered up as the restoration project moves along around them.

(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

The famous ceiling of clouds and intricate plaster characters are only visible high above the floor on the temporary platform that restorers and library officials affectionately call "the dance floor."

(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

What looks like wooden beams and sculptures of cherubs, gargoyles and human type characters are an illusion - it's all plaster. 

(Richard Yeh/WNYC)

(Richard Yeh/WNYC)