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Manhattan’s New Green Space Was J.P. Morgan’s Side Yard
In 1908, an unnamed correspondent for The Occasions of London wrote the initial general public account of the two-calendar year-previous library of the financier J. Pierpont Morgan, upcoming to his property just east of Madison Avenue on 36th Avenue. Modeled by the architect Charles Follen McKim on Renaissance properties like the Villa Medici in Rome, the library contained Morgan’s storied collections of unusual publications and manuscripts, and was developed at a price of just above $1 million (about $32 million today). Describing the library’s lavish interiors and collections, the correspondent wrote, “The Bookman’s Paradise exists and I have seen it.” This weekend and following, the Morgan Library & Museum will…