One of New York's most patrician museums, the Morgan is a world-class treasury of medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts, old-master drawings and prints, rare books, and autographed literary and musical manuscripts. Many of the crowning achievements produced on paper, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, are here: letters penned by John Keats and Thomas Jefferson; a summary of the theory of relativity in Einstein's own elegant handwriting; three Gutenberg Bibles; drawings by Dürer, da Vinci, Rubens, Blake, and Rembrandt; the only known manuscript fragment of Milton's Paradise Lost; Thoreau's journals; and original manuscripts and letters by Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Thomas Pynchon, and many others. Originally built for the collections of Wall Street baron J. Pierpont (J. P.) Morgan (1837-1913), the museum has at its core a Renaissance-style palazzo, completed in 1906 by McKim, Mead & White, which houses the opulent period rooms of Morgan's original library. The East Room (the main library) has dizzying tiers of handsomely bound rare books, letters, and illuminated manuscripts. The West Room, Morgan's personal study, contains a remarkable selection of mostly Italian Renaissance furniture, paintings, and other marvels within its red-damask-lined walls.

Changing exhibitions, drawn from the permanent collection, are often highly distinguished. The library shop is within an 1852 Italianate brownstone, once the home of Morgan's son, J. P. "Jack" Morgan Jr., which is connected to the rest of the library by a graceful glass-roof garden court where lunch and afternoon tea are served. Outside on East 36th Street, the sphinx in the right-hand sculptured panel of the original library's facade was rumored to wear the face of architect Charles McKim. The facade is all you can see at present, as the library is closed for a redesign by architect Renzo Piano. It is scheduled to reopen in 2006. COST: $8 suggested donation. Subway: B, D, F, N, Q, R, V, W to 34th St./Herald Sq.