The Stephen B. Luce Library is named in honor of Admiral Stephen Bleecker Luce (1827-1917), outstanding educator and seaman, author of the classic text on Seamanship, and an effective and persistent advocate for the establishment of state nautical schools and improved training for merchant marine officers. On December 10, 1874, the then Captain Luce personally transferred the school's first training ship, naval sloop-of-war, USS ST. MARY'S to the Executive Committee on the Nautical School of the City of New York.

The Luce Library, recipient of the AIA/ALA award of merit for outstanding library design, occupies 19,000 square feet of the north wing of historic Fort Schuyler on the Throggs Neck peninsula in the Bronx. Fort Schuyler, a granite two-story pentagonal fortification, was built in the early nineteenth century and served as part of New York City's coastal defense, affording protection against invasion from the Long Island Sound.