A Visit to the Gilded Age: the Morgan + Plaza Hotel (Tod English Food Hall)

Have you heard of the Morgan Library & Museum? The Morgan's McKim building is one of the most important buildings of the Gilded Age (the era of great economic and population growth in the U.S. during the late-nineteenth century) in New York, of which generates great interest to architectural historians and other museum professionals.

The institution’s beginnings are rooted in the extraordinary acquisitions of art and literature by financier Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), one of America’s pre-eminent cultural benefactors. His tastes were encyclopedic, and by the early 1900s his holdings were of such magnitude that he commissioned the architect Charles McKim to design a private library to house them. The 1906 neo-classical McKim building, a National Historic Landmark, remains the heart and soul of the Morgan today. In 1928, Pierpont’s son, J.P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943), built an annex to the McKim with a public gallery devoted to exhibiting highlights from the…