J.P. Morgan and our gilded age
John Pierpont Morgan is the glowering face of the Gilded Age. He may have glowered at pesky men with cameras because he was too busy to sit still, but he was also self-conscious because his nose was deformed from rhinophyma. He liked beautiful things, and he was not beautiful. Born into banking family, Morgan rose to become the greatest financier of his time, building much of his empire on railroads. But he was far more than a shrewd businessman. Fluent in French and German and holding a degree in art history, he became a prodigious collector of books and art, a large portion of which were kept at his house on Madison Avenue and 36th Street — what is now the Morgan Library & Museum.
