ANDI: My friends in England suggest that I be called “Keeper of Printed Books and Manuscripts” . . . but you know they have such long titles in London. I’m simply a librarian.

PHILIP: Through all of her shifts in circumstance and self-transformations, “librarian” is the word that most consistently defined Belle da Costa Greene’s identity. It was in her family’s DNA: her father, Richard T. Greener, after becoming the first Black student to graduate from Harvard College, became a librarian and professor at the University of South Carolina before the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877. When she applied to the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1896, she indicated on her application that she “would like to fit for Librarian.” Her first appearance as the head of household in a New York City directory, in 1912, lists her under “Green” as “Bella librarian.” For most of her career her signature and sign off in business letters read, “Belle da Costa Greene Librarian.” After Greene’s death, the book collector Anne Lyon Haight began writing an account of her good friend’s life, drawing on unpublished letters and interviews with people who knew her. Her working title? “The Training of a Librarian.”

But even a passing familiarity with Belle da Costa Greene’s life and career shows that her “simply a librarian” quote is a massive understatement. This was a librarian who spent fortunes at rare book auctions and commanded respect from prominent European curators. This was a librarian regularly featured in newspaper articles on the best-paid women in America, someone who collected fine art and Chinese sculpture. This was a librarian who drove a convertible and cavorted with aristocrats, who dined with avant-garde artists and parodied Gertrude Stein. This was a librarian, in other words, with verve and style uniquely her own.

Though Belle Greene ensured that much of her personal life and thoughts would remain unknowable—she burned her papers before her death—the archival legacy she left behind as a librarian and cultural heritage professional gives us a wealth of information about who she was and what she valued. Her love of art and the written word became the foundation of her professional identity, driving a strong commitment to collection access through research and exhibition programs. For Greene, a book was, as her bookplate suggests, “a friend who never changes.” She ensured that thousands of visitors to the Morgan would also have transformative experiences with books at the institution she often called “her” library.

ERICA: Tracing the life of Belle Greene’s mother has been a challenging task. Born Genevieve Ida Fleet into the prominent Fleet family of Georgetown, Washington, DC, Genevieve became a music teacher and educational administrator. She followed in the footsteps of several family members who taught or performed music, most prominently her father James H. Fleet. Unlike her more famous husband, Richard, whom she would marry in 1874, Genevieve’s life is captured in fleeting glimpses, preserved in newspaper articles, census documents, city directories, and ephemera, like this flier. No photographs of her as a student or Washington, DC resident survive today, and only a few of her letters are extant. This is fairly typical of women’s history, especially when tracing the lives of Black women, as their records were not as carefully preserved.

Genevieve came from a proud family that had been part of Georgetown’s free black community since the early nineteenth century. Many of the Fleet family members attended Mount Zion United Methodist Church, the oldest Black church in Georgetown, whose congregation formed in 1814. But Genevieve’s family attended the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in DC proper, presided over by influential abolitionist minister Francis J. Grimké, who implemented colorist policies in the church. This history reveals the complexity of the elite Black community in DC at this time, a story that is still being uncovered through research by Fleet descendants in DC and elsewhere today. We are grateful to Audri Cabness of Washington, DC—a Fleet family descendant—for sharing more about her family history with the exhibition’s curators.

PHILIP: Belle Greene’s father, Richard T. Greener, led a fascinating life and pursued many professions after becoming Harvard’s first Black graduate. He was at times a professor, librarian, lawyer, writer, and diplomat. But he always strove to leave his greatest legacy as an activist seeking to uplift African-American communities in the United States. Greener was a gifted writer and public speaker and wanted his audience to remember his words. In this following manuscript autobiography excerpt, he wrote during his senior year at Harvard, Greener sought to set the record straight about his personal history while looking forward to a promising future.

JESSE: There are not many pleasant incidents in my college life to recall; the unpleasant ones I have no desire to hear of again.

My chief desire is to lead a purely literary life, in my own way.

I have a great fondness and some knowledge of Art. I am particularly interested in Metaphysics, general literature, and the Greek and Latin classics when divested of grammatical pedantry.

My plans in life are to get all the knowledge I can, make all the reputations I can, and “do good” and make a comfortable competence as the corollaries of the other two. I think I can do these best in the profession of Law.

I have been thus minute with my life, partly to remove many false impressions about me, such as that I escaped from slavery with innumerable difficulties; that I came direct from the cotton field to college; that I was a scout in the Union Army; the son of a Rebel-general etc., and partly because I have an impression that, perhaps, hereafter it will be pleasant for my classmates, and myself, to remember these things.

Richard Theodore Greener
Cambridge, May 19, 1870

ERICA: So many of us come to know our family histories through census records, a form of primary source material made accessible and familiar through resources like Ancestry.com and Family Search, or the popular television show Finding Your Roots. When we use the census to trace families impacted by enslavement and immigration, the records tell us as much about America’s relationship to race and ethnicity as they do about our personal histories. While Belle Greene’s mother’s family would be designated “M” for “Mulatto” in the 1860 and 1870 censuses, by 1930 Greene’s family could only select “White” or “Negro,” reflecting the advent of racial categories influenced by the one-drop rule. Until 1970, individuals counted in the census could not self-report their race but were assigned a category by census workers known as enumerators. When the young Greener family was counted for the 1880 census, the enumerator seems to have made a colorist assumption that the family’s light skin color meant they were “W” for “white.”

The racial identities of Americans were and still are impacted by these record-keeping practices. The rules will change once again for the next census in 2030, including for the first time an option to choose Middle-Eastern or North African and combining race and ethnicity into a single question.

PHILIP: Belle Greene wrote her earliest surviving letter just before starting boarding school at the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1896. Here she writes to Evelyn S. Hall of Northfield in late August 1896, promising to be at school and ready for class the following month.

ANDI: My dear Miss Hall: Yours of the 25th at hand. I fully expect to be present on the ninth of September. Shall send my baggage to East Hall as you direct.

Mother will have to leave home on the third or fourth of September for a short vacation as she is completely run down. She wishes to know if she may send my baggage on the third or fourth, direct to East Hall, E. Northfield, as she does not feel able to pay unnecessary expressage etc. to the country, & then to Northfield. She will be very glad indeed if it is possible to send my trunk direct to the Seminary. Will you kindly send us a line at the earliest opportunity?

Very sincerely,
B. Marion Greene
Thursday Evening August the twenty seventh

PHILIP: After Belle Greene left Northfield in 1898 she attended a summer library school course at Amherst College, where the earliest known photograph of her was taken. It is fitting that this photograph, only discovered in January 2023, is the earliest image of Greene and shows her in library school, training to pursue her life’s work.

PHILIP: Harry Willson Watrous’s enigmatic painting caused much conversation and debate. In his 1915 review for The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, activist and writer W.E.B. DuBois dramatized the painting’s contemporary reception.

JESSE: When this striking picture was exhibited at the New York Academy of Design a year or so ago it attracted great attention. There was a crowd continually around it. A part of the crowd did not understand it. “What does it mean” they asked. Another part pretended that they understood it. “It is miscegenation,” they croaked. Lest, therefore, the crowd surrounding this page of The Crisis should misunderstand this message and The Crisis should figure again in Congress as daring to picture white and black folk together, we hasten to explain.

The people in this picture are all “colored”; that is to say the ancestors of all of them two or three generations ago numbered among them full-blooded Negroes. These “colored” folk married and brought to the world a little golden-haired child; today they pause for a moment and sit aghast when they think of this child’s future.

What is she? A Negro? No, she is “white.” But is she white? The United States Census says she is a “Negro.”

What earthly difference does it make what she is, so long as she grows up a good, true capable woman? But her chances for doing this are small!

Why?

Because 90,000,000 of her neighbors, good, Christian, noble, civilized people, are going to insult her, seek to ruin her and slam the door of opportunity in her face the moment they discover “The Drop Sinister.”

ERICA: People often find this photograph of Belle Greene to be more “authentic,” in that she is not wearing a hat, her hair is visible, and her skin is not brightened by tricks of lighting and pose. She is often described as more natural in this portrait. Greene may have been describing this image when she wrote the following lines to the art historian Bernard Berenson, her most famous lover and recipient of many of her photographs:

ANDI: I am sending you a “real” photograph such as you demand today – It may look rather sad for the simple reason that I was thinking of you all the time it was being taken (honestly) & that always makes me sad”

ERICA: Belle Greene became a newspaper celebrity in the early 1910s, appearing in articles about her, Morgan, and the Library. Though these pieces discussed her work as a librarian and curator, they typically began with patronizing comments on her skin tone, physical appearance, age, and beauty. Given how she was portrayed in the mass media, it is no surprise that Belle Greene rarely gave interviews and virtually disappeared from newspaper coverage after 1915.

ERICA: The painter Archibald Motley Jr., like so many artists during the Harlem Renaissance, wanted to create images that highlighted the fullness of the Black experience while drawing attention to issues facing the community. He accomplished this aim beautifully through this elegant portrait that brings race, gender, and class into conversation, while reflecting his own background within the nuanced system of racial identity practiced in New Orleans. Three years before this painting was made, the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson wrote a poem titled “The Octoroon.” If Motley Jr.’s work appears to recognize and celebrate the sitter’s mixed-race identity, Johnson’s poem reminds us that, in the 1920s United States, the one-drop rule was starting to replace gradations of racial identity with the inflexible binary of “Black” and “White.”

“The Octoroon” (1922) by Georgia Douglas Johnson

One drop of midnight in the dawn of life’s pulsating stream
Marks her an alien from her kind, a shade amid its gleam;
Forevermore her step she bends insular, strange, apart—
And none can read the riddle of her wildly warring heart.

The stormy current of her blood beats like a mighty sea
Against the man-wrought iron bars of her captivity.
For refuge, succor, peace and rest, she seeks that humble fold
Whose every breath is kindliness, whose hearts are purest gold.

PHILIP: Belle Greene’s library career began at Princeton University, where she worked from 1901–1905. It was at Princeton that she worked with important mentors like librarian Ernest Cushing Richardson and benefactor Junius Spencer Morgan. It was undoubtedly difficult for Greene to pass as white at Princeton, given its racist policies, though we do not have any private writings about her experience there. In her letters to Bernard Berenson, Greene always described Princeton in positive terms, as in the following passage from a letter she wrote while visiting the University in 1909.

ANDI:

Princeton, N. J. Friday March 20 – Such a heavenly day as it is my dear – grey and misty and cold – the sort of day I love when one can snuggle up into one’s thoughts without being distracted by the glory of the Sun and the call of out-of-doors …

I came down here this afternoon as I hoped to spend a quiet weekend and find my dear friends have filled up every second of my time – Tonight we go to one of the students’ dances – tomorrow morning automobiling – in the afternoon to the first baseball game of the year – in the evening to a dinner at President Wilson’s etc etc. and my hopes & visions of a rest are thoroughly dissipated – I have such a weird time with the students. They are all so palpably young & I feel as if I had lived ages & ages before they were born & they can’t seem to realize how tiresomely old I am – It’s rather amusing for a few days – I must stop now and dress for dinner – only twenty minutes to my credit – I will write some more after I come back from the dance tonight

ERICA: Only a few years into her role at the Morgan Belle Greene was making major acquisitions for the collection and had earned Pierpont Morgan’s trust. One of her most famous quotes about her future ambitions for the collection comes from a letter she wrote her boss in 1909, announcing her purchase of the earliest surviving manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem, “The Raven.”

ANDI: I also bought the only existing manuscript of the Raven by Poe. The manuscript consists of a letter to Poe's friend Shea—enclosing the eleventh stanza of the famous poem and corrections for the 10th stanza. I think it one of the most important items in American literature and it is almost certain that the main draft of the poem was destroyed in the printing office of the Whig Review (as no trace of his has ever been found). I felt that this belonged with your other Poe manuscripts. It was offered by Hellman for $2500—I bought it at $1500. I have bought other books to fill gaps—one aim is to make the Library preeminent, especially for incunabula, manuscripts, bindings, and the classics. Our only rivals are the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale. I hope to be able to say some day that there is neither rival nor equal.

PHILIP: In the winter of 1909 Belle Greene met the love of her life, the art historian Bernard Berenson. They enjoyed a sweeping romance that would eventually cool into a friendly relationship between art world colleagues, corresponding for four decades in thousands of pages of personal writing. Greene destroyed the letters she received from Berenson, but Bernard saved all of Belle’s letters to him. They are now preserved just outside of Florence, Italy at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. The Morgan and I Tatti have created a new digital resource for the study of these letters, which truly highlight Belle Greene’s voice and personality. In the following early letter, she revels in the beauty of nature using a lyrical prose style.

ANDI:

Tuxedo – Easter Sunday
Sir – I embrace you! –
This is a most glorious Easter day – radiant with sunshine, and the world – like myself, is bubbling over with joy – This is one of the days which proves that I am a pagan pure and simple –

We had a most glorious horseback ride this afternoon – were out for over two hours – and if you have ever been here you know what a glorious country it is for riding –

Last night we had a real old fashioned barn-dance at the Higgins’ which was lots of fun – and tomorrow we are going off on a motor picnic. I know all this sounds very giddy and foolish to you oh! wise and learned Man – but the Spring has gotten into my blood and I am lost to all but reckless gayety. I feel as if I were the re-incarnation of the original bacchante and want nothing in the world but to laugh & sing and dance & be spoiled – You know I dearly love to be petted and spoiled – It is my greatest weakness – and I suppose I really ought to try – (at least) to overcome it – but I don’t –
[...]

What fun it would be to have you here – to go out into the woods – with all their promise of blooms with all their fresh colours washed by the dew before the dawn – to talk when we pleased, to walk when we pleased – sit down when we pleased – then “loaf on up the hill” – Nature has me in her bonds today and holds me with a grip of steel from which I have no desire to break away – I went out early this morning before anyone was down – and was all alone with the sunlight and a little stream of sparkling water that runs through the grounds, it was a curious feeling! a sense of something more. the water was more to one than water and the sun – than mere sun – the gleaming rays of the water in my hand held me for a moment, the touch of the water gave me something from itself. A moment, the gleam was gone, the water flowing away – but I had had them. I had received from them their beauty they had given me of their silent mystery – and I thought of you – dear – of the fleeting hours I had spent with you – and they too like the water & sunshine had flown away – but the beauty and mystery of them remain and in my thoughts are multiplied a thousandfold

The Letters of Belle da Costa Greene to Bernard Berenson »

ERICA: In May 1911 Belle Greene made her most famous acquisition yet, winning at auction the only complete surviving copy of William Caxton’s printing of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Her achievement made headlines and prompted this sensationally titled magazine article, “Fifty Thousand Dollars For That Book!” The morning after the article was published, Belle Greene was horrified when her mother showed her the piece.

ANDI: We arrived about brutal and I was “all in” so went immediately to bed and was awakened by mother bending over & holding up a horrible vision of myself in the Sunday World – full page & brightly coloured. Well I had a dozen different fits of anger and despair. You can’t do a thing with these damned newspapers – and although it said in the accompanying article that I was very quiet – & self-contained yet this picture was of half actress and half college girl – It really is too mean of them. If I behave in a dignified way when attending to my business why can’t they treat me in the same way in their newspaper or better still why can’t they leave me out? I was so cross that it has given me a violent headache & so I am spending the morning in bed.

ERICA: Belle Greene used this furniture in the Library’s North Office. It was from this desk that she oversaw the daily task of running the library and met with the many friends and professional colleagues she made throughout her career. The card catalogue cabinet, custom swivel chair, and desk were built by the London furniture manufacturer Bernard Cowtan & Sons. Correspondence with Cowtan survives in the Morgan’s Archives and documents the various details that Belle Greene wanted for her desk, as can be heard in the following exchange:

ANDI: Did I ask you to make a compartment on one of the drawers of my (personal) desk for holding a bunch of the catalogue cards? I enclose one for size. Also, could I have a sort of ‘box’ compartment for keeping money used in the ‘petty’ expenses of the library, and a place for stamps, etc. I hate to be such a nuisance but you spoiled me by saying I could have anything I liked.

PHILIP: It is no trouble at all to arrange the drawers in your own writing table to take a bunch of the catalogue cards, and one of the drawers to be devoted for the money and keys, with a place for the stamps, and we will space out the drawers accordingly; and I am not unmindful of the secret opening arrangement which we have spoken about.

PHILIP: Belle Greene daringly traveled to England during the First World War and purchased this manuscript, one of the finest sets of biblical miniatures in existence, without the express permission of her new boss, Pierpont Morgan’s son, Jack Morgan. The manuscript had been offered to Pierpont Morgan several years earlier, but he had turned down the offer. Knowing the immense research value and stunning beauty of the miniatures, Belle Greene returned to the manuscript’s owner in 1916 and closed the deal. The following is the letter she wrote to Jack Morgan to announce the acquisition.

ANDI:
My dear Mr. Morgan,
On my visit to Cheltenham this week I purchased from the present owner, Mr. Fitzroy Fenwick, his famous thirteenth-century French manuscript of the Bible Historiée, the finest example of French art of the period in private hands. It consists also of only 43 leaves—there are two others in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (now in course of publication by the Comte de la Borde) and one at Cambridge—for this latter single sheet they paid, several years ago, £300. I agree to pay Fenwick £10,000 for his 43 leaves. The transaction makes me feel better about my ‘torpedoed’ letter of credit as Quaritch offered to try to obtain it for us for £15,000 plus his commission of 5% and Yates Thompson thought I would have to pay much more for it. Mr. Fenwick is coming to London to see me today, when we will arrange terms of payment and talk over 5 other manuscripts. I should like to have, or to have the promise of. If I had been able to stay here several weeks longer I know I could have bought every important manuscript in private hands in England. There was not time to get to the Duke of Northumberland’s collection (Duveen has just bought his Bellini) but I may be able to do something by correspondence.
Sincerely,
Belle Greene

ERICA: In 1910 Belle Greene and Bernard Berenson visited an important exhibition of Islamic art in Munich, Germany. There she saw an album of Persian and Mughal miniatures on loan from the collection of British Museum curator Charles Hercules Read. Greene corresponded with Read extensively and in this letter asked him about the album she saw in Munich.

ANDI:
My dear Mr. Read:

You will remember that when you were in America you told me that you might find it necessary to sell your collection of Persian drawings, which I remembered having seen in the Exhibition in Munich last summer, and which at the time I considered among the finest things in the Exhibition. I do not know whether you still desire to part with these drawings; but, in case you do, I want to ask you if you will not give Mr. Morgan the first opportunity of purchasing them. Unfortunately, Mr. Morgan himself is not particularly interested in Persian art; but it seems to me that, in a collection of manuscripts and drawings such as he has, it is very necessary for him to have a representation of this most important school, and I doubt if he would ever be able to find finer specimens than those which you are so lucky as to own.

PHILIP: Belle Greene made a name for herself working at the Morgan, but she led a fascinating life outside of the Library. She had a wide social circle in New York, often dining out with friends and attending the theatre or opera. She drove a Pierce Arrow convertible and enjoyed what was then called “motoring” in the countryside to escape the heat and crowds of Manhattan. She went to masked balls, hung out with modernist artists and writers, and formed her own art and antique jewelry collection.

One of her good friends was the English actor Ellen Terry, who was immortalized in her role as Lady Macbeth through John Singer Sargent’s famous painting. On Christmas Eve 1910 Terry and Greene spent the evening together out on the town, as recounted in this letter to Bernard Berenson.

ANDI: I have been seeing a good deal of Ellen Terry & Sara Bernhardt lately. Two women who fascinate me—Ellen Terry spent last night with me & it is a fact that we did not go to sleep until five o’clock this morning—Never have I seen any one so overflowing with vitality & the joy of living as she is. We went in the evening to see Humperdinck’s new opera the Königskinder which is very Wagnerian—very Tristan and in the dances a touch of Hansel & Gretel The Russian dancers gave a Ballet afterwards & I almost fainted with joy—Pavlowa [sic] does a thing called the Swan which is too wonderful and she and Mordkin did a Bacchante dance that simply took me off my feet. Then Frank Sturgis gave us a supper at the Metropolitan Club & we came home & had another supper (chiefly a smokers) in my tiny apartment & Ellen T. & I talked for two and a half solid hours & as I said it was five o’clock before either of us thought of supper or bed—My but that woman has lived and so has the divine Sara—Do you suppose I will ever have all those exciting experiences?

PHILIP: Nearly twenty-five years ago a woman named Gertrude Tuxen wrote a letter to the Morgan Library. In it she recounted her days emigrating from Denmark and working for Belle da Costa Greene as a chambermaid in the late 1930s, a position she held for only a couple of years. Her letter is valuable not only for its description of Belle Greene’s apartment and family life, but also for the candid photographs she placed in the envelope. These show the household dog, a view from the apartment’s balcony, and, most importantly, the only known photograph of Belle’s mother Genevieve. The following is an excerpt from her letter.

ERICA: Belle da Costa Greene’s mother is to the left, my aunt Vica and uncle Harald Svantemann are next and Elise Olsen, housekeeper at Miss Greene’s Home, is the dark-haired lady. Another important member of this little group is the Pekinese at Mrs. Greene’s feet, Hia Shua San—called San—it was Elise Olsen’s great love, I remember she cooked calf liver for the dog, Miss Greene had acquired it on a trip to China. …

I was a domestic in Miss Greene’s household from ca. May 1939 until a short time after Denmark was invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. Miss Greene lived on 66th Street between Madison and Park. She and her mother occupied the 7th floor which had its own elevator entrance. The home was a “museum” with many items from Miss Greene’s travels with JP Morgan, there were chairs you were not to sit on, and I was told that many things were museum bound eventually. The household consisted of Miss Belle da Costa Greene, her mother whom I addressed as Mrs. Greene. We referred to [her] as the “old lady,” her adopted son Bob—then a Harvard student—came now and again. Elise Olsen, a Norwegian, was cook and housekeeper, San, the Pekinese, I was chambermaid and dog walker, and had recently arrived from Denmark. …

Miss Greene must have been away, when it was decided to give Mrs. Greene an outing. As you will see we brought with us a very comfortable chair for the old lady, I don’t believe she had been out of the house in years. To begin with it was quite pleasurable for her to be on the trip, but it eventually became quite a strain for her, and I recall her saying “You are trying to kill me.” I am not sure Belle was ever told about this excursion, it was not repeated in my time there.

PHILIP: Given Belle Greene’s association with the largely historical collections of the Morgan Library, it may come as a surprise to know that she moved in some of New York’s avant-garde circles. She owned drawings by Henri Matisse, Abraham Walkowitz, and Clara Tice, known as the “Queen of Greenwich Village.” Marius de Zayas caricatured Greene and she contributed an article to Alfred Stiegltiz’s periodical Camera Work. As signaled in that piece, she always had an ambivalent attitude toward modern art, finding it at once attractive and repulsive. A similar perspective is on display in the following passage from one of her letters, in which she describes encountering “a wild bunch” of modernist artists at a restaurant.

ANDI: I rode aimlessly down Lipton Avenue until I saw the Holland House and suddenly decided to go in there and have a bit all by myself – At the door I was greeted by a wild bunch of men that we call the “Secessionists” here – Steiglitz & Marin & de Zayas & Havemeyer & Bliss Carman and they insisted that I have luncheon with them. They are so sincere in their outlandish “futurism” and other ism’s that one cannot help liking them – even though not one in the crowd had a clean collar or a shaven face – They took me over to their little attic room, later to see the latest outpourings of Picabia, Picasso and this little Marin …

PHILIP: Belle Greene became involved in the 1916 U.S. Presidential election to support the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes, who sought to extend the vote for women. She was tapped into the larger National Hughes Alliance, which supported the candidate, but also volunteered her time to the Women’s Roosevelt League for Hughes. This photograph was taken during a Roosevelt League gathering. A pamphlet about womens’ efforts to elect Hughes, shown nearby, begins with a foreword addressing the need to report their activities and celebrate politically active women.

ERICA: The Women’s Committee of the Hughes Alliance is publishing a report of its work in the recent campaign because it believes that its many thousands of contributors, workers and members should know what was done and how it was done. We believe that the work of this Committee has a message for women in future American political campaigns.

There is a second reason for this report. The deliberate misrepresentation concerning the women’s work has grown to such proportions that we believe the public is entitled to the facts regarding the women’s campaign in general and the women’s campaign train in particular. The women’s movement in national politics has come to stay. This report covers something of its manner of coming and may have a message for those interested in the manner of its staying.

ANDI: If I can make a big institution out of it – it will be all that I or anyone else can expect – I shall start in just as soon as this inventory business is over – to see what I can do to make it a dernier ressort for scholars in certain fields, to make our material available to them and to make them welcome here.

ERICA: In 1924 Belle Greene’s wish came to fruition and the private library of Pierpont and Jack Morgan became the Pierpont Morgan Library. Greene was appointed its first director. In this section, you will see many facets of Greene’s work as librarian and director: her commitment to education and special collections teaching, her blockbuster exhibitions, her support of publication projects and research, her interest in preservation techniques, her remarkable acquisitions, and her dedication to collection access.

When the Morgan began mounting major exhibitions and opening its doors to researchers in the 1920s, newspaper accounts remarked on the important dual mission of the institution to serve both scholars and the public, as in the following anecdote:

PHILIP: It is difficult to say which will be the greater usefulness traceable to Mr. Morgan’s gift, the work done by specialists in the original Morgan library, or the pleasure and instruction derived by much larger audiences from popular exhibitions of the Morgan Library’s resources, of which we trust the present is only the first.

PHILIP: Though scholars had been able to access the Morgan’s collection for many years, the Library was always closed if Pierpont was out of town, and in its earliest days access was highly limited. The following anecdote from 1908 offers colorful detail about how prospective researchers accessed the Library:

One had to ring an outside bell to have the door opened by a guard, and then only about four inches. A business card would be passed in and the door would be closed again and locked. After a short interval, the guard would reappear and state if Miss Greene would see the caller. After a few visits, I was admitted at once.

All of this changed when the Library went public in 1924. When the first reading room opened in 1928, it followed the access policies laid out by the Board of Trustees, which stipulated that the institution is a “public library, for reference only . . . for the use and benefit . . . of all persons whomsoever, subject only to suitable rules and regulations.” The Board clearly took its role seriously in establishing a policy to provide access to the collection but also to protect and preserve it. An early goal was “to encourage quality of scholarship rather than ‘numbers’ of students.” This meant that researchers were required to submit letters of recommendation and schedule special appointments with staff to consult “reserved” books and manuscripts, such as Shakespeare’s First Folio. The earliest set of rules did not allow undergraduates to consult rare materials, though by 1933 that rule had been relaxed.

ERICA: Telling the story of Belle Greene’s work as a librarian demands that we turn our attention to the lives and careers of other Black librarians working in the same era. This section therefore honors Catherine Latimer, who worked at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Regina Andrews, also of NYPL; Vivian Harsh of the Chicago Public Library; and Dorothy Porter Wesley of Howard University. These women were pioneers in their work and fought hard to bring literacy and information access to their communities. They were also inspiring speakers and writers.

Vivian Harsh once said, “If we as Negroes knew the full truth about what we, as a race, have endured and overcome just to stay alive with dignity, our respect and hunger for education would triple overnight.”

Despite making up only a small fraction of the profession, Black librarians are deeply proud of their work and outspoken in their advocacy for their communities. When Dr. Carla Hayden was appointed the Fourteenth Librarian of Congress in 2016, she brought a heightened visibility to Black librarians on a national stage. As she once said, “Now we are fighters for freedom, and we cause trouble! We are not sitting quietly anymore.”

Belle da Costa Greene was a Black librarian, even if she did not identify as such. Her work as a librarian did not impact Black communities in the same way as did the practices of her contemporaries, such as Catherine Latimer at NYPL. This is not to diminish Greene’s accomplishments in any way, but rather to uplift the work of other Black librarians at the time who have not been as prominently discussed as Greene.

PHILIP: To honor her retirement and celebrate an exceptional career, the Morgan mounted an exhibition of Belle Greene’s best acquisitions in 1949. A New York Times review remarked not only on the exhibition’s treasures, but the remarkable legacy of the woman who brought them together in one building. Here is a passage from the beginning of the review.

There are many people who may have contemplated the treasures of the Morgan Library without ever meeting personally its erstwhile director, Belle da Costa Greene. But no one there could have been unaware of her taste, her intelligence, her dynamism. For it was Miss Greene who transformed a rich man’s casually built collection into one which ranks with the greatest in the world.

ERICA: Belle Greene’s life impacted so many people during her lifetime, and her legacy continues to inspire new generations of readers, museum visitors, and library professionals today. When her friends and colleagues published a tribute volume of essays to honor her memory in 1954, Greene’s protégé Dorothy Miner wrote a foreword that imagined what a biography of her former boss might look like. As she wrote,

A biography of Belle Greene would be a fascinating and colorful account with a fabulous array of personalities, settings, and incidents. It would move against a backdrop of princely palaces and international playgrounds, austere libraries and remote cloisters, of academic meetings and the world of society. … It would be full of triumphs and fairy-tale successes, gaiety and humor, irony, sorrow, bravado, and courage. … Above all, it would be a tale crowded with people—people of every kind and station—some known to all the world by reason of power or accomplishment, some the most obscure of students.

It was this very democratizing impulse, to serve the scholar and student alike, that made Greene such a special librarian and the Morgan such a singular place.