Pierpont Morgan Library and Annex

History and architecture

The original building of the Pierpont Morgan Library,designed in the Italian Renaissance Eclectic Style, was built in 1906 to house Mr. Morgan's collection of paintings, sculpture and his valuable library. This beautiful building is considered Charles Follen HcKim' s masterpiece. Twenty-two years later, after the Library had grown to include more manuscripts and drawings, the adjoining Annex was completed on tho site of the elder Morgan's residence. Architect Benjamin Wister Morris accomplished this task with rare perception by creating a Florentine Renaissance design, harmonious with the original Library, without copying any of its detail. Although connected at the rear, these two fine buildings appear as separate buildings. They are slightly raised above street level and separated from the street by a lawn, as well as by a beautiful fence and entrance gates.

The Library is more frequently reproduced in various publications than the Annex because it is more striking architecturally. Its central Palladian motif, which uses four paired Ionic columns instead of the usual two, provides a deeper reveal for the arch. This motif, in turn, is backed by a deep porch with a beautifully decorated groin-vaulted ceiling. Niches with sculptured figures and an entrance doorway, enframed in the Roman Style, are other features of this porch.

The bronze doors have been ascribed to Italian craftsmen -of the seventeenth to - nineteenth centuries, and are in the tradition of Ghiberti's renowned doors of the Baptistry in Florence. Tho exterior details of this building are perfect evidence of the careful collaboration of architect and sculptor, working to produce a masterpiece for one who was not only an outstanding connoisseur of the arts but a philanthropist as well.

The remarkable details include exterior walls which are constructed of "dry masonry" where joining surfaces of the marble blocks have been sot without mortar and have been ground until they are absolutely even, and fit so tightly that one cannot insert a pen knife between the stones. This type of "dry masonry" was used in the Parthenon and Erechtheum in Greece but has rarely been used elsewhere.