Ever wish you could step back in time? Wander around one of the wealthiest men in America’s personal libraries, face-to-face with his private collection?
Last week I was transported all the way back to 20th-century Manhattan, as I found myself inside one of the most stunning museums that exists within New York City. The Morgan Library & Museum 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, and old master drawings and prints… and you can see them all for yourself, right here at The Morgan Library and Museum in New York.
Located in Murray Hill on Madison Avenue, J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library and Study begins in the Rotunda. In Morgan’s day, visitors to his library passed through a pair of monumental bronze doors into this rotunda full of opulent detail. On view in the Rotunda are highlights from Morgan’s distinguished collection of rare printed and manuscript Americana. As Pierpont Morgan strove to build an American library that would rival the great collections of Europe, he also acquired important letters of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as well as collections documenting the early years of the republic.
Morgan would spend a lot of time in his richly appointed private study, known as the West Room, away from the Wall Street offices of his banking firm. In this room, among some of his favorite works of art, Morgan worked, relaxed, and met with art dealers and business associates. It was even here that he gathered a group of bankers in 1907 to orchestrate his dramatic resolution to a national financial panic.
In 1905, as the construction of his library neared completion, Pierpont Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene to manage and augment his collection of rare books and manuscripts. She later served as the Morgan’s first director. For over forty years, Greene worked in the sumptuous North Room. Today the North Room serves as a gallery devoted to the earliest works of art from the Morgan’s collection: ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets; Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture; and jeweled early medieval objects from the Thaw Collection.
Lastly, you can visit the East Room. With its three-story inlaid walnut bookshelves and magnificent ceiling, the East Room was designed as a treasury for Pierpont Morgan’s remarkable collection of rare printed books. Morgan was also a member of an exclusive dining club that admitted only twelve members at a time — one for each sign of the zodiac — and the arrangement of the signs in his library’s ceiling are believed to possibly carry a hidden meaning related to key events in his personal life.
Selections are changed regularly here in the library, but a seminal work is always on view: one of the Morgan’s three copies of a Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455, which was painstakingly copied by hand as books were back then!
For a bit of background on Mr. Morgan, his astounding success transformed the financial industry and left behind a powerful legacy. Although he twice bailed out the U.S. Treasury, his ability to do so left many unsettled, spurring the creation of the Federal Reserve System in late 1913. His name lives on through the massive international banking firm he created, which entered the 21st century as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. In 2010, the Morgan restored the interior of the 1906 library to its original grandeur. A new lighting system was installed, its intricate surfaces were cleaned, period furniture was reupholstered, and original fixtures — including three chandeliers removed decades ago — were restored and reinstalled. Completed in 1906, Mr. Morgan’s Library — as it was called for many years — is the historic heart of today’s Morgan Library & Museum, and you simply must see it for yourself.
