Morgan Library & Museum

About

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the personal collection of financier John Pierpont Morgan, who from around 1890 amassed illuminated manuscripts, literary and historical manuscripts, early printed books, and Old Master drawings and prints. Between 1902 and 1906, architect Charles McKim built an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo to house it. Among Morgan's most notable acquisitions are three copies of the Gutenberg Bible, purchased in 1896, 1900, and 1911 — the Morgan remains the only institution in the world to hold all three. After Morgan's death in 1913, his son J. P. Morgan Jr. converted his father's library into a public institution in 1924. An annex was added in 1928, and in 2006 architect Renzo Piano designed a roughly 75,000-square-foot expansion that gave the museum its present form.