Belle da Costa Greene’s office, known as the North Room, was prominently located off the Rotunda and luxuriously adorned. The antique stone mantelpiece (adapted for the room) was flanked by custom-made cabinets that Greene and her assistant, Ada Thurston, filled with catalogue cards describing Morgan’s books and manuscripts.

For this staged photograph, a framed print of Edward Steichen’s now-iconic 1903 photographic portrait of J. Pierpont Morgan was placed atop the cabinet at right. The picture on the left cabinet depicts J. P. Morgan Jr. (“Jack”), who founded the Pierpont Morgan Library (now the Morgan Library & Museum) as a public institution in 1924.

Zoom image

Zoom image

Morgan sat for Steichen in 1903, while construction of the Library was underway. In this memorable portrait, a glint of light appears to transform the arm of the chair into a knife blade. Steichen sent this print to Greene and inscribed it on the verso; she added a note in her own hand: “Belle da Costa Greene, her most precious possession.”

William Mitchell Kendall, an accomplished drafter at McKim, Mead & White, created this detailed rendering of the ceiling of the North Room, which would become Greene’s office. The blank compartments would be filled with canvases by the muralist James Wall Finn, who drew heavily on the work of artists such as the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

In the drawing, someone has penciled the names of twelve Italian Renaissance patrons (ten men and two women) around the perimeter. Relief portraits of these figures would be installed in the ceiling’s border.

William Mitchell Kendall (1856–1941) for McKim, Mead & White
3/4” Detail of North Room Ceiling, Morgan Library, 11 April 1905
Ink on linen
New-York Historical Society, McKim, Mead & White Architectural Collection

Zoom image

The completed ceiling. Photo: Graham S. Haber, 2017.

The last book Morgan likely held was not a luxurious rarity but this everyday devotional volume—a well-worn copy of the Book of Common Prayer. He died in Rome in March 1913, a week after attending Easter services. Belle da Costa Greene used a sheet of black-bordered mourning stationery to document the volume’s significance and preserved it in the Library’s Archives.

In his will, Morgan bequeathed $50,000 to Greene, “who has long been my efficient librarian,” and added, “I trust that she may be continued as librarian thereof at a salary not less than that which she shall be receiving at the time of my death.”

Belle da Costa Greene (named Belle Marion Greener at birth) grew up in a predominantly African American community in Washington, DC. Her father, Richard T. Greener, was the first Black graduate of Harvard College and a prominent educator and racial-justice activist. After Belle’s parents separated, her mother, Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener, changed her surname and that of the children to Greene. While Belle was in her teens, Genevieve and the children began passing as White.

This is the earliest known photographic portrait of Belle da Costa Greene, taken five years after Morgan had engaged her as his librarian. Morgan had known Greene’s father when both served as officers of the Grant Monument Association during the 1880s. It is likely, but not certain, that Morgan ultimately learned that his former colleague and his librarian were father and daughter.

After Morgan died in Rome in 1913, his body was transported to New York and laid out in his Library. The casket was carried out to a horse-drawn hearse, which proceeded south to St. George’s Episcopal Church on 16th Street, where Morgan had been an active parishioner. On the day of his funeral, the New York Stock Exchange remained quiet until noon.

J. P. Morgan Jr. inherited his father’s Library. In 1924—with Greene’s strong encouragement—he turned it over to a board of trustees, which appointed her the inaugural director of the newly incorporated Pierpont Morgan Library (now known as the Morgan Library & Museum).