It’s a generous act to share a garden with passersby, keeping the perimeters transparent instead of hiding interesting things behind a privacy screen.
At the Morgan Library on 36th Street, a blank space around an imposing stone loggia has become a garden destination that can be physically accessed for the first time.
A Venetian well-head from the 15th century sits serenely among octagonal flower beds, echoing not only the footprint of the stone work but embossed shapes around the loggia, designed by McKim, Mead and White in the first years of the twentieth century.
Photograph courtesy of the Morgan Library.
“There was scope to use this unelaborated ground plane to establish new visual and physical connections among the McKim Library, the Annex, and Renzo Piano’s Piazza–to inscribe it with a new geometry, and to enhance it with antique artifacts that had been acquired by JP Morgan with a view to being placed in his garden.”
Rich textures and patterning can be seen on horizontal and vertical planes as well as the 3-dimensional antiquities in generous, full view of passersby.
Photograph courtesy of the Morgan Library.
One that quietly and playfully complements but that neither disturbs nor imposes itself upon the existing enfilade of outstanding buildings that form the Library s East...
...36th Street frontage The result is demure yet fiercely stylish quite a mix and something that could be said about the public designs of Russell Page
A Roman sarcophagus highlights a couple of lions attacking their prey, in contrast to a cool pair of lionesses flanking the steps. In 1912, JP Morgan hired a young Beatrix Farrand to make a garden around what was his home, as well as the home of his extensive collections (the library).
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Photograph by Valery Rizzo.
A master mosaic designer, Orazio Porto, was brought over from Sicily to enhance the ground plane, which has the vibrancy and meticulous detail of beading on a couture dress.
Every detail of the original 1902 project was carried out meticulously by craftsmen and this kind of perfectionism has not been compromised in the exterior’s refurbishment 115 years later.
Photograph by Valery Rizzo.
“I, too, looked to Pirro Ligorio’s Casino Pio IV in the Vatican, who inscribed patterns on the ground plain to integrate a complex architectural composition.”
Seen from under the awnings of Murray Hill apartment buildings across the street, the library and museum’s exterior is as quiet as ever, enhanced by its original features of immaculate bronze railings and the simple yet very grand architecture of McKim, Mead and White.
Photograph courtesy of the Morgan Library.