Half Hour at the Morgan Library

The Morgan Library, south wall

It is a quintessential American story (by George!):

There lived a man who liked buying stuff. He filled two houses with stuff, but when stuff started to overflow his third house, he built a large shed to store his stuff. When the man died, his children held a garage sale and donated the rest of the stuff to charity.

The man in question is John Pierpont Morgan (1837 – 1913) (the JP Morgan, JPM) and his stuff – an eclectic collection of art, books, and manuscripts – at the time of his death was worth over $50M and accounted for up to three quarters of his estate. The big shed is what is now known as the Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue and 36^th Street.

After Pierpont’s death, his son Jack, JPM, Jr., sold part of the estate to pay taxes, gave a large part (6 to 8 thousand pieces!) to the Metropolitan Museum, where his father had been a trustee since 1888 and the president since 1904, and in 1924 unloaded the rest into a trust overseeing a public library and museum.

A visit to the Morgan Library (visit virtually via the Google Art project), which offers free admission every Friday between 7 and 9 pm, was planned as yesterday’s after-dinner entertainment; but various circumstances intervened, and I ended up having only about 40 minutes to spend there. The Library is certainly worth a cursory look and perhaps more.

JP Morgan (see a good photo of him here and an interesting story of another portrait here) was born into a family of Junius Spencer Morgan, businessman and banker, and his wife Juliet Pierpont. His father started grooming him for a career in business from an early age. Pierpont finished Boston’s English High School, which provided practically-oriented education and strong training in mathematics, and was then sent to Europe to study first in Switzerland and then at Gottingen University in Germany. 

After completing his studies in 1857, Pierpont started working at the London banking firm George Peabody & Co., where his father Junius was a partner. After Peabody retired in 1864, Junius took over the firm and eventually gave it his name (J. S. Morgan & Co). Pierpont returned to New York and started working for companies which, as representatives of his father’s firm, were pumping European money into the American economy. Since the 1870s he became a businessman in his own right and eventually amassed a vast fortune through acquiring companies and making them profitable. Lightning-quick ability to do mental math, keen business sense, exceptionally accurate judgment of human character, ambition, and social grace have helped JP Morgan to become a key player on Wall Street and eventually one of the most powerful men in the world.

Mrs. Morgan No. 1
Amelia Sturges (1835-1862)
Morgan Library archive

In 1861, Pierpont married a woman he loved, Amelia Sturges, only to see her die of tuberculosis just four months after the wedding. Seeking a distraction from grief, JPM immersed himself into business and church activities, but some said that he never got over this loss.

In 1863 Morgan purchased an exemption from the military service in the Civil War, having spent $300, an equivalent of his and his father’s annual cigar budget, to pay another man, to whom he referred as “the other JP Morgan”, to fight in his stead. I am curious whether Morgan's double survived the war and how JPM and "the other JPM" were connected in the grand scheme of life.

Mrs. Morgan No. 2
Frances Tracy Morgan
(1842-1924)
Morgan Library archive

At the end of the war, in 1865 Morgan married Frances Louisa Tracy, who, as it seems, was his opposite in all respects except social standing: he was larger than life, outgoing and adventurous, while she was a low key, introverted homebody. They soon gave up on each other, but not before producing four children, three daughters and a son.

A collection of photographs illustrating JPM's life can be found in this blog (in French) and a biography in this documentary. The author of a comprehensive biography of JPM, Jean Strouse, speaks here about her research and provides a number of fascinating facts from her book.

JPM. Photo from the Met Museum Bulletin 2000,
story by Jean Strouse

Morgan became interested in collecting historical artifacts at an early age, but started buying art on a large scale after his father’s death in 1890. Until the early 1900s, he kept most of his collection in London, in the house he inherited from his father. In 1904 he bought a house next door to accommodate his growing hoard (14 Prince’s Gate). Meanwhile part of his book collection was stored in the basement of the mansion at 219 Madison Avenue, which the Morgan family occupied since 1882. The Morgan house was the first electrified residence in New York City, outfitted with incandescent light bulbs by Edison, whose many projects were financed by JPM. The electricity was supplied by a steam power generator, which was installed in the basement and in the early days caused two small fires. This was not a good neighbor for the ever growing cache of precious books. Pierpont decided to build a separate library next to his residence and in 1902 he commissioned the project to Charles McKim, the senior partner of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. By 1906 the construction of the new library was complete.

The old library consists of only four rooms: JP Morgan’s study, the Library, and the Librarian’s Office, grouped around a lavishly decorated Rotunda. [Photos are dark because flash photography is prohibited]

Rotunda: 

Rotunda ceiling

The Rotunda is a foyer opening into the street via the main entrance (from 36 St.) and into all three rooms of the Library building. Its decor reflects the love for the Renaissance art shared by the owner and the architect. The ceiling paintings depicting the three literary eras that dominated the library collection - the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance - were executed by H. Siddons Mowbray. The marble walls and floors and the mosaics and paintings bring to mind a hybrid of an Italian palazzo and the Moscow metro.

Study:

Inside the vault

The study is a grand room with the walls upholstered in deep red fabric, carved wood ceiling, heavy furniture, windows with stained glass insets, and decorated with dozens of artifacts, mainly from the Renaissance era. A large portrait of JP Morgan overlooks the study from above the mantelpiece, his purple nose disfigured by rhinophyma tactfully rendered simply as a Large Nose of a Great Man. The room testifies of JPM's ability to buy good items; whether it shows a love of art is unclear.

Vault doors

The best part of the room is the closet, or rather the vault with reinforced walls and thick steel doors, behind which JPM’s most prized possessions were kept. It clearly signals that it is a banker's study after all.

Library:

South-east corner

Library ceiling

The library is a huge square space with a 30-foot ceiling and three levels of bookcases. The bookcases are made of bronze and inlaid walnut. On each side of the entrance, hidden behind bookcases that swivel on hinges are marble staircases leading to the upper levels. The bookcase on the left side does not fit into its frame perfectly and leaves a small gap, through which a beautiful, brightly lit, white marble staircase can be glimpsed. 

Dame in the north-east corner

The Triumph of Avarice, 16 c. 

On the east wall, above a grand marble mantelpiece, is a huge tapestry, The Triumph of Avarice, from the series titled Seven Deadly Sins, produced in Brussels in 1545. The inscription at the top reads, “As Tantalus is ever thirsty in the midst of water, so is the miser always desirous of riches.” If this is a reflection of JPM’s sense of humor, my opinion of him is slightly improved. 

Bibles, two bookcases of them

Travelogues - La Divina Commedia

In glass cases are an obligatory copy of the Gutenberg Bible, one of three owned by the Library, beautifully illuminated medieval manuscripts, and autographs of various famous people, including a request for a loan written by Mozart shortly before his death, and letters by Jane Austen, Einstein, Wilkie Collins, as well as sheet music by Beethoven, Verdi, and Wagner. Researchers who wish to use the original documents can request access to the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room. Jean Strouse, the author of JPM's biography mentioned earlier, described in her interview how the Library had given her access to a large cache of documents related to JPM's life, including letters and diaries.

Chick flicks

Durer's babe, 15 c.

First book printed in English.
Raoul Lefevre, Recuyell of the Historyes
of Troye, Bruges (1473-74)

Librarian's Office:

Librarian's Office
Collection of cylinder seals on the left

The Librarian’s Office is the smallest room in the Library. Currently it is used to display items from JPM’s comprehensive collection of the Near Eastern cylinder seals, which includes about 1200 items. 

Cylinder seals next to their imprints

The seals are probably the most interesting part of the collection. Also on display are cuneiform tablets, although most of them are now kept at the Babylonian Collection founded by JPM at Yale. 

Cuneiform tablets

First Librarian: Belle da Costa Greene

Belle Greene. Photo from
American National Biography site

Still more fascinating is the personality of the former occupant of the office, JPM’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene. When you see a name like this, you immediately sense that it is bogus (conspiracy theorists, enjoy). The woman was certainly a match for her boss and had the most extraordinary “legend”. She was born Belle Marion Greener (that’s more like it!) into a prominent black family in D.C. Her father, Richard Theodore Greener, was the first black man to graduate from Harvard and later served as the dean of Harvard University School of Law. After the parents separated, Belle and her maternal relatives essentially erased Mr. Greener from their lives. Belle changed her family name to “Greene” and assumed a middle name of da Costa, claiming Portuguese ancestry to account for her complexion (right, it's the Moors! - although Belle must have had a complex cocktail of genes). From then on she “passed” as a white woman, as this practice was known at the time, and identified herself as white during census. Rumors swirled, of course, but people found Ms. Greene most charming.

In her early 20s (apparently she lied about her age, too), Belle worked as a junior librarian at the Princeton University Library, where she developed an interest in old manuscripts. There she met Junius Spencer Morgan, JPM’s nephew, a Princeton alumnus and a fellow bibliophile. Junius recommended Belle to his uncle, who was looking for somebody to manage his new library. The enterprising belle and the old crook hit it off immediately and soon developed a great rapport and mutual admiration. 

In 1905, JPM hired Belle Greene as his personal librarian. She proved to be an indispensable agent of her master’s cause: exceptionally intelligent, highly energetic, ambitious, thorough, possessed of charm and grace, as well as exotic appearance, expensive taste, and a flair for high fashion, Belle has become one of the most influential figures in the art world of the time and maneuvered with ease in the most privileged circles. Equipped with her master’s unlimited means, she continued to acquire precious books and manuscripts, always seeking a second opinion from the experts. After JPM’s death in 1913, Greene became the Library’s first director and remained in office for a total of 43 years. When the Library opened to the public, she mounted several exhibitions that were attended by about 170 thousand people. Shortly before her death in 1950, she wisely burned most of her voluminous correspondence.

Bell from the Corsair,
JPM's yacht

The library has been expanded twice, first in 1928, when the old Morgan residence was torn down and replaced by the Annex for temporary exhibitions, and a second time in 2006, when a modern pavilion was erected to connect the old Library, the Annex and the newly acquired JPM Junior’s brownstone on Madison and 37^th Street into a unified complex. 

Between 2003 and 2006, a new building, designed by Renzo Piano and Beyer Blinder Belle, was constructed behind the old library, to provide additional space for exhibitions, storage, lectures and concerts, and a visitors' entrance on Madison Avenue. The modern architecture is so different from the style of the old library that it creates a feeling of temporal disorientation whenever you cross the boundary between the two buildings; however, the new building by itself is airy, welcoming and pleasing to the eye. 

Madison Avenue entrance to the Morgan Library

Gilbert Court in the new building