The Pierpont Morgan Library, one of the world’s foremost centers for research in literature, art and music, is buying the 45-room brownstone mansion just to the north and will roughly double in size, the library announced yesterday.
The mansion, on Madison Avenue at 37th Street in Murray Hill, was once the home of Morgan’s son, J. P. Morgan Jr. It is being bought for $15 million from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. It is to be adapted to the library’s needs by Voorsanger & Mills Associates, the New York architectural firm.
The museum, a major repository of illuminated manuscripts, Old Master drawings, printed books from the 15th century to the present and literary and musical manuscripts, is scheduled to begin work on the mansion in about a year. The expanded facility is expected to open in about a year and a half.
Haliburton Fales, president of the library’s board, said yesterday that for the last 10 years the library had been increasingly handicapped by lack of space. ”The collections, staff, public programs and other activities have been growing apace; every square inch of usable space has by now been fully utilized to accommodate this growth. I do not exaggerate when I say that the situation had become critical. The acquisition of this property is an ideal solution to what had seemed for some time an insoluble problem.” Start of Capital Campaign
Less than 1 percent of the Morgan’s collection is on view at a time, according to museum officials. With the new exhibition space, the museum will be able to have a permanent installation of representative materials from all parts of its collections.
The purchase of the mansion coincides with the start of a $40 million capital campaign to cover the cost of the house and adapting it as well as to increase the library’s endowment and make it possible to re-house the library’s collections of books, manuscripts and drawings, provide more office space and put its educational and other services on a secure financial footing.
Betty Wold Johnson, a trustee and fellow of the library, is to be chairman of the campaign. Substantial pledges have already been received from Mr. and Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon, the Robert Woods Johnson Jr. Charitable Trust, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Thaw, the Michel David-Weill Foundation and some anonymous donors.
The library may also share or rent a portion of the new building to nonprofit groups to help meet the purchase and renovation costs, said Charles E. Pierce Jr., the director of the Morgan.
The Morgan library and the mansion are survivors of the time when many of New York’s 400 -the Belmonts, the Rhinelanders, the Tiffanys and the Morgans – lived in Murray Hill. How It Started
J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) was a committed and compulsive collector from the age of 14, when he asked President Millard Fillmore for his autograph and got it in an envelope personally franked by the President. As a schoolboy in Switzerland and Germany he collected fragments of stained glass, some of which are now part of the windows in the Morgan Library West Room.
After his father’s death in 1890, Morgan went on to build ever larger collections of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, Old Master drawings, early printed books, fine book bindings and literary and musical manuscripts.
In 1900, Morgan bought property on 36th Street east of Madison Avenue, and asked the celebrated firm of McKim, Mead & White to design a building to house his collection and a study for his private use.
Charles McKim undertook the commission himself and produced a building that is both hospitable and majestic. Well adjusted to works of art of all kinds, it is widely regarded as a treasure house in its own right and one that draws freely and ingeniously upon the civilizations in which Morgan was especially interested. It is still a hospitable place where the guards act more like hosts than bouncers. Collection Continues
When Pierpont Morgan died in 1913, his son J. P. Morgan Jr. continued the collecting with the help of Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950), who had proved herself a gifted librarian when still young and who was to spend 43 years at the library.
In 1924 J. P. Morgan Jr. transferred the library to a board of trustees in the belief that it was too important a resource to remain in private hands. Not long after that, it was incorporated by the New York State Legislature as a public reference library. Four years later, Pierport Morgan’s original mansion at the corner of 36th and Madison was torn down to make way for the library’s expansion.
Among the strengths of the Morgan Library’s collections are the ninth-century Lindau Gospels with their spectacular jeweled binding, the William S. Glazier collection of illuminated manuscripts dating from the fifth to the 16th centuries, the Farnese Hours by Giulio Clovio (the most famous Italian Renaissance manuscript) and three Gutenberg Bibles.
There are master drawings and prints by artists ranging from Leonardo, Michelangelo, Durer, Mantegna, Claude, Rubens and Rembrandt to Watteau, Cezanne, Degas and Matisse. By 1905 Pierpont Morgan had bought some 700 printed books dated before 1501 from English sources alone. Later holdings of special importance relate to American, English and French literature, together with the Greek and Latin classics. The Musical Treasures
Literary manuscripts include the 39 volumes of Thoreau’s journal, Mark Twain’s ”Life on the Mississippi,” ”Endymion” by John Keats and the Byron manuscripts the poet gave to his mistress Countess Guiccioli.
The library’s musical collections, unrivaled in the United States, include major manuscripts by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Stravinsky. Both a museum and a research library, it offers the serious inquirer a range of high-quality material that is unique in its kind.
The mansion to the north was built in 1852 for Anson Phelps Stokes, a banker. With 22 fireplaces and a dozen baths, it at once took rank with the most imposing New York town houses of its period. The brownstone was designed in Renaissance revival style, with graceful balconies and wrought iron grillwork. After the death of its original owner, it was bought in 1904 by J. Pierpont Morgan for his son. Father and son lived as neighbors until the death of Pierpont Morgan in 1913. (The two houses were originally separated by a third brownstone. Pierpont Morgan bought it, razed it and turned the site into a garden he and his son could enjoy). Church Is Moving
The Lutheran Church bought the building in 1944 for $265,000, and it has been the world headquarters for the Lutheran Church in America. The church, recently consolidated as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is moving its headquarters to Chicago.
Bartholomew Voorsanger, of the architectural firm that will renovate the building, said, ”The central challenge is to add useful and harmonious spaces while still maintaining the intimacy of the institution and the integrity of its architecture.”
It was Pierpont Morgan’s wish that the activities of the library be available free to all. But in changing times, with ever mounting costs and collections that grow year by year, that policy has led to an operating deficit. Mr. Hales said yesterday that ”acquiring new space is so critical that we are willing to invest $15 million for the purchase price, despite the library’s annual deficit, which exceeds $200,000.”
During the directorship (1969-87) of Charles Ryskamp, who is now director of the Frick Collection, the library pursued a vigorous and inventive exhibition policy that attracted many thousands of visitors.
Its new director, Mr. Pierce, says he is determined to maintain that atmosphere. ”The Morgan Library will grow,” he said yesterday. ”But it will not grow at the expense of intimacy and human scale. Those are among the qualities that set us apart from many another cultural institution in this city, and they must be preserved. We are not changing our fundamental nature but simply adding the space that we need to allow for the steady and healthy growth of our collections and our services.”
