Theodore C. Marceau (1859–1922), Belle da Costa Greene, May 1911. (Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies)

Overcoming Racism, Sexism, and Classism In the Gilded Age

By Ilene Dube

As the personal librarian to financier J.P. Morgan, Belle da Costa Greene was one of the most influential people in the art and book world. She was courted by dealers, embraced by the socially powerful, and profiled for her accomplishments at a time when working women were rare.

Even before women won the right to vote, Greene was one of the most prominent career women of the early 20th century. She pursued and curated a collection of rare books, manuscripts, and art that became world-renowned. She was regarded as an authority on illuminated manuscripts, and because of her work, the Morgan Library became known as a collection of rare books, manuscripts, and art that competed with such esteemed institutions as the British Museum.

Known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works, the fixture of New York society was also stylish and beautiful. In photos she can be seen wearing feathered hats and fur stoles. None other than Marcel Duchamp created a work of art on a small perfume bottle that he named for her.

But Greene closeted a burning secret: She was passing as white.

The fascinating story of Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) juggling her identity and career is novelized in the New York Times bestselling The Personal Librarian (2021), written by Heather Terrell (writing as Marie Benedict) and Victoria Christopher Murray. While certain details are fictionalized, The Personal Librarian is rooted in historical truths.

“[When I] read about Belle da Costa Greene, I knew what she was going through,” said Murray, who is Black, in a Washington Post interview. “I knew that every day she went out of her house wearing a mask. I knew all the questions and things that she had to have inside, but she couldn’t ask out loud.”

“It did not feel right or appropriate for me to try and tell the story of a Black woman without a Black woman,” said Terrell, who is white, in the same interview. “I think, as an author of fiction, you can envision a lot. But there are certain stories that deserve to have a storyteller who has had those experiences themselves or had similar.”

Adds Murray: “I do not believe that a Black woman could have done justice to Belle, just as I believe a white woman couldn’t have done her justice either. We had to find a way to blend these two lives together for her, and that’s what I think we did.”

At the end of the day, says Terrell, “when Belle put her head down on her pillow, she was a Black woman.”

The story of Belle da Costa Greene might still be buried in a library if Murray and Terrell had not brought it to life. In 2022, Al Roker Entertainment optioned the book for a limited series or film. And to mark the centenary of its life as a public institution, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City will present “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy,” a major exhibition devoted to the life and career of its inaugural director, on view October 25 through May 4, 2025.

J. Pierpont Morgan, 1902. (Pach Bros., The Morgan Library & Museum)

John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan, his dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform the shape of the American economy. As his wealth grew as one of the most influential financiers in the U.S., Morgan amassed a collection of fine art which was stored, for tax purposes, in England. He also began to acquire historically important manuscripts, which were not subject to import taxes. When they overwhelmed his residential space, he began acquiring land on 36th Street near Madison Avenue.

The Morgan Library & Museum, completed in 1906, is today a complex of structures. The main building was designed by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, with an annex designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris. A 19th-century Italianate brownstone house at 231 Madison Avenue, built by Isaac Newton Phelps, is also part of the grounds. The complex includes three additional structures, including a glass entrance building designed by Renzo Piano and Beyer Blinder Belle.

The main building and its interior are a New York City designated landmark and a National Historic Landmark, while the house at 231 Madison Avenue is a designated city landmark. What was once the office of Belle da Costa Greene is now a book-lined reading room, with stone sculpture — including one in her image — and a stone fireplace.

J. Pierpont Morgan’s library. (The Morgan Library & Museum. Photography by Graham Haber, 2014)

Greene was born into a prominent family of intellectuals. Her father, Richard T. Greener, was the first Black graduate of Harvard in 1870 who went on to work as an attorney, professor, racial justice activist, and dean of the Howard University School of Law. He was a contemporary of Frederick Douglass, held diplomatic posts overseas, and was devoted to art, books, and aesthetics, according to Daria Rose Foner, a 2011 Princeton alumna and one-time research associate to the director of the Morgan Library & Museum. Now a vice president at Sotheby’s New York, Foner — who earned a Ph.D. in art history at Columbia University — gave a talk on Greene in 2022 for the Princeton University Library.

Greene’s mother, Genevieve Fleet, came from a family of well-educated musicians — her brothers were named Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Bellini — and spent two years in a college preparatory course at Oberlin. She worked as a teacher and school principal in African American school districts. Fleet decided that the only way the fair-skinned family could cope with racism was to pass as white. Fleet went so far as to declare the family white in the 1905 New York State Census, resulting in a rift and ultimate separation from Greener when Belle was a teenager.

“She changed their names and told them how they had to behave,” Murray said on Good Morning America.

Belle Marion Greener became Belle da Costa Greene — the da Costa part coming from a fictitious Portuguese grandmother, as that lineage would help to explain Greene’s olive complexion.

Architectural rendering of the proposed library for Morgan by McKim, Mead, and White, ca. 1902. Watercolor over pencil. (The Morgan Library & Museum)

After attending the Horace Mann School for Girls in New York, Greene went to the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in rural Massachusetts. (It has since been incorporated into the Northfield Mount Harmon School.) Her application indicated she’d wanted to be a librarian since she was a teen. She excelled at Latin and German, according to Foner. Following Northfield, she attended Amherst College’s summer school of library economy.

Greene began working at the Princeton University Library in 1902, where she was trained in cataloguing and reference work and developed a growing knowledge of rare books.

“The phenomenon of passing is not uncommon for light-skinned African Americans confronting the rigid racial exclusions that defined Jim Crow America in the North as well as the South,” said Foner. “In most cases passing involves severing ties with one’s family. For most of Greene’s life this was not her experience. Her passing was more of an open secret. She crossed the color line with her mother and siblings.

“Had it been known that according to the American one drop definition of race that Greene was Black, she would never have been able to work at Princeton, often referred to as the Southern Ivy because of its large number of students from the former Confederacy. Princeton was an enclave of white privilege. A large number of its buildings were named for men who owned slaves. Princeton would not graduate its first African American student until 1947.”

It was at Princeton where Greene met associate librarian and ardent bibliophile Junius Spencer Morgan II, who introduced her to his financier uncle. At age 26, Greene was hired as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built library. He soon came to appreciate her intelligence and humor, and to trust her vision and expertise.

By living as a white person, she was able to live more freely, attending balls, dining at restaurants, and traveling to Europe for acquisitions.

When asked if she was Morgan’s mistress, Greene replied, “We tried!” Greene admittedly had romantic feelings for Morgan — in the novel they share a kiss — but she also saw him as a father figure. Their passion of wanting to turn the library into a one-of-a-kind institution was their greatest bond.

In 1913, J. P. Morgan left Greene $50,000 (equivalent to $1,500,000 today) in his will. She continued to work as personal librarian to J. P. Morgan Jr., and in 1924 was named director of the Pierpont Morgan Library when it became a public institution. She retired in 1948, and was called “one of the best-known librarians in the country” by the New York Times after her death in 1950.

But her fame and fortune came at a cost: to protect her white identity she was cut off from some family members, and although she had lovers, she could never marry.

“I’ve always known that, because of my heritage, a traditional relationship would not be possible for me … because a marriage means children, and that is something I cannot hazard,” the character based on Greene is quoted in The Personal Librarian. “Without the fairer skin of my siblings, I could never risk bearing a child whose skin color might reveal my deception.”

Greene, and her family’s, need to conceal their race and the lengths she had to go to protect her position and reputation speaks volumes about the prevailing racism of the time. Although she had to hide her background, Greene managed to surpass societal expectations and ascend to greater heights than most women of her time. From the opulent Gilded Age ballrooms of New York to the fiercely competitive auction houses of Europe, she defied sexism, classism, and racism.

And yet many viewers of her photos today might wonder: How did she manage to pass? Even Murray talks about how, whenever she posted photos of Greene and people saw her features, they thought:

Of course she is Black.

Although Greene was taking the path her mother had laid out for her, she felt she was betraying her father, according to Terrell. Greener had moved to Japan, where he acquired a new family, but they shared such traits as their passion for books.

While Greene enjoyed extraordinary success and prosperity, Greener, unusually well-educated for his time and circumstance, frequently found himself out of work.

Greene destroyed her personal correspondence before her death. Obituarists alluded to rumors about her family passing for white, but she was never identified publicly as Richard Greener’s daughter until her birth certificate was discovered by biographer Jean Strouse in 1999.

Had her race been revealed in her lifetime, it would most likely have cost her her job, her social standing, and her carefully cultivated persona.

For more information about the exhibition, visit themorgan.org.

The Morgan Garden, evening view looking north. (Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. © Brett Beyer, 2022)