Three Midtown Rooms Built for Small Collections
A 1785 trades society, a Broadway design archive and Pierpont Morgan’s library, all within a twenty-minute walk.
Three Blocks of Fifth and Broadway
A Library From 1785
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen was founded in 1785 by local craftsmen and still runs a tuition-free school, a lecture series over a century old, and a 200-year-old trades library. The museum of antique locks is the odd draw. Nobody is performing history here; the rooms are simply still in use.
Theatre Told Through Models
The Museum of Broadway spreads across 26,000 square feet of stage models, memorabilia and behind-the-scenes exhibits, balancing production history with rooms built for photographs. It is the busiest of the three and the least quiet: go early or accept a crowd and look at the models instead of the sets.
Morgan’s Own Rooms
The Morgan began as Pierpont Morgan’s private library and became an independent research library and public museum, with illuminated manuscripts, master drawings and the Gilded Age interiors that held them. The study and the library are the reason to come; the temporary exhibitions are a bonus, not the point.
