A museum and independent research library, the Morgan Library & Museum began as the personal library of financier, collector, and cultural benefactor John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913). As early as 1890, Morgan had begun to assemble a collection of illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts, early printed books, and old master drawings and prints.
Mr. Morgan's Library, as it was known in his lifetime, was built between 1902 and 1906 adjacent to his New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street. In 1924, eleven years after Pierpont Morgan's death, his son J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943), known as Jack, realized that the library had become too important to remain in private hands. He fulfilled his father's dream of making the library and its treasures available to scholars and the public alike by transforming it into a public institution. The Morgan opened its doors in October 1928.