Everything about Pierpont Morgan Library totally explained
The Morgan Library & Museum (formerly The
Pierpont Morgan Library) is a museum and research library in
New York City. It was founded to house the private library of
J. P. Morgan in 1906, which included, besides the manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, his collection of prints and drawings. The library was designed by
Charles McKim from the firm of
McKim, Mead and White and cost $1.2 million. It was made a public institution in
1924 by his son,
John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.
The building was declared a
National Historic Landmark in 1966.
Collection
Today the library is a complex of buildings which serve as a
museum and scholarly research center. The scope of the collection was shaped in its early years as a private collection by
Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, who would become the library's first director and served from the time it became public until her retirement in 1948. Her successor,
Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr., managed the Library until 1969 and was also world-renowned for his own personal collections. The library contains many
illuminated manuscripts, as well as authors' original
manuscripts, including some by Sir
Walter Scott, and
Honoré de Balzac, as well as the scraps of paper on which
Bob Dylan jotted down "
Blowin' in the Wind" and "
It Ain't Me Babe".
It also contains a large collection of
incunabula, prints, and drawings of European artists—
Leonardo,
Michelangelo,
Raphael,
Rembrandt,
Rubens,
Gainsborough,
Dürer, and
Picasso, early printed
Bibles, amongst them, three
Gutenberg Bibles, and many examples of fine
bookbinding. Other holdings include material from ancient Egypt and medieval liturgical objects (including
Coptic literature examples),
Emile Zola,
William Blake's original drawings for his edition of the
Book of Job; a
Percy Bysshe Shelley notebook; originals of poems by
Robert Burns; a
Charles Dickens manuscript of
A Christmas Carol; a journal by
Henry David Thoreau; an extraordinary collection of autographed and annotated libretti and scores from Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler and Verdi, and
Mozart's Haffner Symphony in D Major; and manuscripts of
George Sand,
William Makepeace Thackeray,
Lord Byron,
Charlotte Brontë and nine of
Sir Walter Scott's novels, including
Ivanhoe.
Architecture
The first dedicated building to house the library (the
McKim Building) was designed by
Charles Follen McKim in 1903. It is located at 33 East 36th Street which was at the time right to the east of J.P. Morgan's residence, a brownstone house built in 1880 (address: 219 Madison Avenue). McKim took his inspiration from the
Nymphaeum in
Rome. In
1907, Pierpont Morgan helped end the
Panic of 1907 by rallying fellow bankers to supply liquidity to shore up the endangered banking system. The crisis was resolved in the library after he locked the doors and refused to let the bankers leave until they agreed to a rescue plan.
Morgan's residence was torn down in 1928 to be replaced by an exhibition hall and a reading room, also constructed according to a design by Charles McKim. The remaining Italianate brownstone house in the library complex is 231 Madison Avenue (on the corner of 37th Street). This house was built by Phelps, Dodge and Company in 1852 and purchased by J. P. Morgan in 1904 and served as the home of his heir J. P. Morgan Jr. from 1905 to 1944.
Recent Renovations
The Morgan Library was closed while it underwent a major expansion project designed by architect
Renzo Piano, his debut in New York City. In the interim it sponsored numerous traveling exhibitions around the country. When the work was completed, "The Morgan" reopened, now as the Morgan Library & Museum on
April 29,
2006. With the expansion above and below street level, the Morgan's exhibition space had been doubled; Piano set its new reading room under a translucent roof structure, to allow scholars to examine manuscripts in natural light. Piano's four-story steel-and-glass atrium links McKim's library building and the Morgan house in a new ensemble. Added storage facilities were obtained by drilling into
Manhattan's bedrock schist.
Trivia
E.L. Doctorow's
Ragtime featured a dramatic denouement in the newly-opened Morgan Library.
In the Broadway musical "Ragtime" (based on the novel of the same name) the library is the location for the final scenes of the show.
Location
The Library is located in midtown
Manhattan at the edge of
Murray Hill, its street address is: 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Further Information
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