The Building Blocks of Morgan's Library

The first exterior elevations of the Library were created in March 1903 by a drafter who signed “Stevens”—likely Gorham P. Stevens, who worked for McKim, Mead & White before departing to serve as the inaugural architectural fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Once construction of the Library was underway, McKim would send Stevens several squeezes (molds) of the spaces between the marble blocks, telling him, “Our vertical joints are nearly, if not quite, as good as the best of the Greek, it being impossible to insert a knife blade between them.”

Note the maned lion depicted at the Library’s entrance. The sculptor Edward Clark Potter would ultimately produce lionessses instead.