Morgan Library & Museum, New York
The Morgan Garden is the latest component in the ongoing evolution of the Morgan Library & Museum’s campus. Located in the heart of midtown Manhattan, the Morgan Garden enables visitor access to the exterior of the Morgan’s historic 1906 McKim, Mead, and White library and the south side of the Morgan’s site for the first time in the institution’s history.
Although J. Pierpont Morgan intended to form a garden in front of his new Library, the area set aside remained unelaborated at his death in 1913. In the absence of any known designs, we pursued a scheme which aims to reflect Morgan’s fascination with European culture and one which neither compromises the architectural integrity nor distracts from the monumental yet intimate character of what is considered to be among the most outstanding Renaissance Revival buildings in America. As both the library and the ground in front of it are raised on a podium above the street it has been possible to create a garden that is reasonably self-effacing when seen from the public footpath, but which reveals its richness upon exploring it at first hand – just as the chaste facade of the Library conceals the richness of its contents. Lighting has also been an important aspect of the scheme: a new lighting programme by Tillett Lighting Design bathes the Library and garden in soft ‘moonlight’ and highlights distinctive landscape features and elements of the facade in warmer tones.
The garden is an exciting new addition to the Morgan - a whiff of Rome in Midtown Manhattan. Its sweeping Graeco-Roman pebble pavements (laid by the Sicilian craftsman Orazio Porto), ancient sculpture and wispy planting animate a hitherto undistinguished and inaccessible south-facing sliver of the campus. Visitors are now invited to explore the garden, and it is hoped that its presence shall induce passers-by who are unfamiliar with the Morgan to explore its outstanding collections.