Hello, this is Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast,

where every other week we delve into journeys

light and dark in America's Gilded Age, France's Belle-Pucque, and England's late Victorian

and Edwardian eras.

Of all the spaces in New York City, where one can see the opulence of the Gilded Age today,

one of the most dramatic, memorable, and intact is the Morgan Library and Museum.

The Morgan Library, known during his lifetime, as just Mr. Morgan's library, is just that.

The once private library built by Gilded Age financier, J.P. Morgan.

The library building itself was designed and built between 1902 and 1906 by the renowned architect Charles Fallon McKim of McKim, Mead, and White. Inspired by the grand palazzi of the Italian Renaissance, the library today overwhelms

visitors by the beauty of its soaring spaces, the intricate mosaics, the elegant carvings

of wood and marble,

and then, of course, there is the Morgan's extraordinary collection of rare books, old master prints and drawings,

and priceless historical manuscripts.

The collection includes such treasures as copies of the Gutenberg Bible,

a first edition of Dickens' A Christmas Carol,

the manuscript of Jane Austen's Lady Susan,

handwritten pages of a symphony by Mozart,

and over 350,000 other objects from Eastern and Western world history and culture.

J.P. Morgan was a passionate collector,

and as can often be the case, the story of how great collections are built is rarely the work of one person alone. In the case of J.P. Morgan's

collection, it was the extraordinary expertise, vision, and passion of a woman named Belle De Costa Green, whom Morgan hired in 1905 to expand and curate the collection.

As the result of her work, she became one of the most famous and influential librarians in America,

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