Director

Erica Cialella, 2020–2022 Belle da Costa Greene Fellow: The North Room served as Greene’s office when she worked at the Morgan. Within these walls she negotiated book deals, met with scholars, held staff meetings, and, according to Greene, answered thousands of letters a day. The office contained two large custom card catalogs, used by Greene and her staff to keep track of the growing collection. On the occasion of her retirement, a colleague described the dynamic card catalog system she developed as “more broadly conceived than the usual instrument of its kind.”

From her desk, which was often said to be a mess, she would answer correspondence and sign paychecks, all from a custom swivel chair she had requested to make her work more efficient. Her great responsibilities as library executive made Greene one of the highest paid women in the country. By the 1920s she was making around the equivalent of $286,000 a year in today’s dollars. A contemporary newspaper article paired an image of Greene with the eye-catching headline, “Women Who Earn Big Wages.” In 1924, when the Library became a public educational institution, Belle Greene was appointed the Pierpont Morgan Library’s inaugural director.