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In a move to double its space, the Pierpont Morgan Library will buy, renovate and occupy a 136-year-old brownstone mansion next door. The purchase "is the only solution to what seemed an insoluble problem," the research library and museum's need for more room, Haliburton Fales II, president of the board of trustees, said Tuesday.
It also allowed the library to avoid the controversy aroused by other cultural institutions that have expanded by taking public park land, selling air rights for intrusive skyscrapers or constructing stylistically incongruous additions.
The Morgan Library has agreed to pay the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is moving its offices to Chicago, $15 million for the mansion.
Charles E. Pierce Jr., the library director, said the new space would not radically change the institution. "One of the great appeals of the library has always been its intimate, human scale," he said. "People should be reassured that we have no intention of undermining this."
The mansion, at Madison Avenue and 37th Street, will afford space needed for exhibitions, storage, educational programs and offices, he said.
Michael Kaiser, associate director, said the library may use its archive of Morgan family possessions, including furniture and decorations, to create some period rooms. In all, the library will spend about $5 million restoring and renovating the house. The mansion was built in 1852 as the residence of Anson Phelps Stokes, a financier and heir to the Phelps, Dodge copper fortune. In 1904 it was bought by J. Pierpont Morgan as a home for his son, J.P. Morgan Jr. The elder Morgan had lived in a brownstone next door since 1880.
The 45-room house, which has 22 fireplaces...