Morgan Library and Museum

Morgan Library and Museum

One of most celebrated civic gifts made by the bankers and robber barons of New York's gilded age, the Morgan Library is the remarkable and eclectic private library of Pierpont Morgan, made public. In the late nineteenth century, book- and manuscript-collecting was not yet the aspirational fad it is today, and Morgan -- neither a scholar nor quite an aristocrat -- was able to assemble one of the world's most impressive collection of literary and historical artifacts with only intermittent dedication and an amateur judgment. Today the collection holds original manuscripts by Sir Walter Scott and Honore de Balzac, William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and others, three Gutenberg bibles, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Picasso, Rubens and Rembrandt. In 2006, the Morgan Library was re-opened in a new, stunning and inviting space built by starchitect Renzo Piano, featuring, among other amenities, a translucent roof to allow the reading of the Library's manuscripts in natural light.