Morgan Library III

MORGAN LIBRARY III
New York, America – 2015

Located in the heart of New York City, the Morgan Library & Museum is a unique blend of a museum and an independent research library. It began as the personal library of financier, collector, and cultural benefactor Pierpont Morgan.

As early as 1890, Morgan had begun to assemble a collection of illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts, early printed books, old master drawings and prints. Mr. Morgan's library, as it was known in his lifetime, was built between 1902 and 1906 adjacent to his New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street. Designed by Charles McKim, Mead & White, the library was intended as something more than a repository of rare materials for its owner.

Majestic in appearance yet intimate in scale, the structure reflects the nature and stature of its holdings. The result was an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo with three magnificent rooms epitomising America in this era. Completed three years before McKim's death, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

In 1924, eleven years after Pierpont Morgan's death, his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943), known as Jack, realised that the library had become too important to remain in private hands. In what constituted one of the most significant cultural gifts in U.S. history, he fulfilled his father's dream of making the library and its treasures available to scholars and the public alike by transforming it into a public institution.
show less