Front Elevation, Proposed Library Museum for J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., New York

Architect Whitney Warren Jr. prepared this elevation drawing for a monumental library and museum to house the expanding art and manuscript collections of financier J. Pierpont Morgan. The design features a Beaux-Arts facade with a grand barrel-vaulted entry beneath ornamental attic, flanked by arched loggias and engaged columns. Detailed pen-and-ink rendering on gridded paper documents Warren's careful proportional studies and decorative program. Though this proposal was not built, it represents the institutional ambitions of America's Gilded Age collectors and the architectural language that defined major public institutions at the turn of the twentieth century.