McKim sent this carefully worded letter to Morgan in early 1904, two years after he was commissioned to design the Library. He asked for a meeting to present the interior designs along with a comprehensive cost estimate. To mark the Library’s association with the Italian Renaissance, McKim proposed that the front doors be surmounted with a marble bas-relief incorporating the trademark of Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian scholar-printer who founded the Aldine Press in 1494.
Morgan approved the designs and the budget. He retained this letter, one of only a handful between the two men to survive.
Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909)
Letter to J. Pierpont Morgan, New York, 28 February [1904], page 1
The Morgan Library & Museum Archives