two hundred cases of books, which were temporarily stored in the Lenox Library and moved to Morgan's personal library starting in December 1905. Around the same time, Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene as his personal librarian. The Wall Street Journal reported in June 1906, when the library was near completion, that Morgan had "wanted the most perfect structure that human hands could erect and was willing to pay whatever it cost". For example, the usage of dry masonry marble blocks, an uncommon construction method in which masonry blocks were shaved precisely to remove the need for joints made of mortar, added $50,000 to the cost of construction. McKim had suggested the dry masonry blocks to Morgan after having unsuccessfully tried to place a knife blade in the joints of Athens's Erechtheion, and he ordered a plaster cast from his former employee Gorham Stevens, who worked in Athens. Morgan was impressed with the quality of the work, as McKim would recall in a February 1906 letter to his colleague, Stanford White. Even so, Morgan often upheld the library as an accomplishment of McKim's. The final design was more representative of the work of William M. Kendall from McKim, Mead & White. Opening and early years Morgan began to use his office in November 1906 with a reception for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's purchasing committee. The details were not completed until January 1907, and the Morgan collection was relocated into the library later that year. Morgan's library had cost $1.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Several publications praised the completed library. In 1906, the Real Estate Record and Guide wrote of McKim, Mead & White: "the new Morgan Library, in Thirty-sixth street, is among their most carefully studied designs." The library building was described in another publication as "one of the Seven Wonders of the Edwardian World". A correspondent for the London Times, in 1908. characterized John Pierpont Morgan as "probably the greatest collector of things splendid and beautiful and rare who has ever lived". During the Panic of 1907, Morgan used his library to convene a meeting among the city's major financial figures, with bank presidents meeting in the east room and trust company presidents in the west room. To find a solution to halt the panic, he locked his guests in the library overnight, and his secretary relayed messages between the two rooms. Morgan continued to