McKim, Mead & White held an impressive library that informed its design practice. McKim himself relied heavily on the nineteenth-century French architect Letarouilly’s compilation of line drawings of Roman buildings. This plate depicts the nymphaeum of the sixteenth-century Villa Giulia, designed largely by Bartolommeo Ammannati. The Renaissance building was a key historic precedent for the façade of Morgan’s Library. McKim inscribed this copy to nineteen-year-old Lawrence Grant White, son of Stanford White, in 1906—just as Morgan’s Library was being completed and not long after Lawrence’s father was murdered. Lawrence was then an undergraduate at Harvard; he would go on to join the firm and have a distinguished architectural career himself.
Paul Letarouilly (1795–1855)
Édifices de Rome moderne; ou recueil des palais, maisons, églises, couvents, et autres monuments publics et particuliers les plus remarquables de la ville de Rome, vol. 2
Paris: Morel et Cie, 1874
Avery Classics Collection, Columbia University