In 1908, an unnamed correspondent at The Times of London opened the first public account of J. Pierre Pont Morgan’s two-year-old library in Financier, next to his home just east of Madison Avenue on 36th Avenue. created.
Modeled by architect Charles Foren McKim Villa Medici The Roman library contains a collection of Morgan’s renowned rare books and manuscripts, which were built at a cost of $ 50,000 and now over $ 1 million. The correspondent described the library’s gorgeous interiors and collections, writing that “Bookman’s Paradise exists and I’ve seen it.”
This weekend and the next weekend, Morgan Library & Museum Celebrating the restoration of the landmark McKimville, we are announcing a new garden next door, a new green space in Manhattan, and related exhibitions. “Today,’Bookstore Paradise’ belongs to all of us,” the exhibition declares.
In this week’s interview, Morgan’s director, Colin B. Bailey, said the $ 13 million restoration and garden project came from a 2016 assessment of library masonry, roofs, drains and metalwork. This is ten years after Renzo Piano completed its design to integrate the three landmark buildings of the museum through a steel and glass pavilion. (The other two landmark buildings Benjamin Wistar Morris The 1924-28 Annex and 19th-century RH Robertson Brownstone were located on Madison Avenue and East 37 Street, where JP Morgan Jr. and his wife lived. The piano design has moved the original entrance to the museum on East 36th Street to Madison Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets.
The museum has developed an elaborate program to restore the façade and exterior sculptural decorations of the Mackim building. Waterproof its foundation and roof.When Develop an invisible pigeon control program Because it is a descendant of a bird that began to perch in the building in 1906. (The pigeon turned out to be fearless and very territorial.)
We also hired a British landscape designer Todd Longstaff Gowan Hampton Court, Kensington Palace, and Kew Palace are included in its mission to design a 5,000-square-foot garden parallel to the library’s facade. In 1912, Morgan asked landscape architect Beatrix Jones (Beatrix Farrand later) Design a garden in the space between his house and the library. Her design was never carried out. Until the design of the new garden, the space was occupied by what Longstaffe-Gowan called the “indistinguishable” green grass vertical band. “We used the garden to showcase the exterior of the library and try to give visitors a moment to pause and work on the building itself,” says Bailey.
The Longstaffe-Gowan garden concept was approved by the New York City Landmark Conservation Commission in 2018 and was inspired by Morgan’s European-centric flavors and collections. The pattern includes library floors and exterior pavement, as well as bluestone paths that reflect pavement pavement. Created by Sicilian artisans It uses stones from the coast of the Ionian Sea and volcanic ash from Mount Etna.
Longstaffe-Gowan also installed sculptures in the garden, including a Roman sarcophagus, a Roman funeral stele, and two Renaissance haunches from Morgan’s collection. Most importantly, we deliberately created landscape designs featuring low vegetation, such as geraniums, anemones, asters, foxtails, and viburnum trees, so as not to interfere with Mackim’s architecture. He said in an interview that his botanical choices and patterns were partially influenced by the 15th-century French and Italian manuscripts in Morgan’s collection.
Morgan hired a lighting designer, Linnaea Tillett, To enhance the nighttime presence of the McKim Building, which was previously illuminated only by streetlights. “Landscapes, paths and lighting are designed to provide an intimate encounter with the building,” Bailey said.
The exterior entrance to the McKim building was the main focus of the museum’s conservation team, led by the New York-based Integrated Conservation Resources (ICR), and also worked on the 2010 restoration of the interior of the Morgan Library. Created in 1900 and inspired by the Renaissance bronze doors of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Florence Baptistery, the doors decorated with the bronze scene of Christ’s life were cleaned and preserved.
Jennifer Scholk, ICR’s partner and chief guardian of the Morgan project, said the project’s goal was to “clean, refresh and repair the McKim building, but with changes from the original design intent and appearance. To avoid it. ” She called it “impeccable.”
The library consists of Tennessee pink marble from a quarry near Knoxville. It’s limestone, not true marble, and according to the museum, it’s “perfectly” cut into blocks separated by a lead sheet that’s only 1/16 inch thick. ..
“In the 15 years since we did this, I’ve never worked on a building that was designed and built so well,” Schork said. “Maintaining, refreshing and recovering that excellence was certainly horrifying.”
Its masonry design and implementation is “unmatched in any building in New York City. No mortar was used. An ancient Greek temple built in the Acropolis to house a wooden statue of Athena. The stones were placed directly facing each other with a very thin layer of lead sheet between them, in a manner similar to that used in the Electeion.
Anthony Achiavatti, A visiting assistant professor of urban studies at Yale School of Architecture pointed out Morgan’s new garden and recently redesigned nearby roof deck. Staflosniacos Foundation Library “Expanding scope and public mission” of both institutions.
He said that placing Roman and Renaissance sculptures in Morgan’s garden could attract passers-by “to see the objects in the building.”
Catherine Dunn Reaver, Interim Director of the Garden & Library Academic Program at the Winter Tour Museum in New Castle County, Delaware, said the museum and other cultural sites “make collections and spaces more accessible to more people.” We are working on how to do it. ” She said she “combines the idea that Morgan is learning art, beauty, rest, and what it is known (inside) in new ways on the outside.” ..
Morgan’s director, scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2021, provided a more realistic assessment of the timing of the unveiling ceremony delayed by the pandemic.
“The fact that we are opening up outdoor space seems to be ordained now,” Bailey said. “We have found the right moment. People are in each other’s company and want to see beauty.”
Morgan Library & Museum
Exhibition from this weekend to September 10th, “J. Pier Pont Morgan Library: Building Bookman’s Paradise” it is open. The garden will open on June 18th. The library is currently open. 225 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 685-0008; theyorgan.org.
