Richard Morris Hunt

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John Singer Sargent : Portrait by Richard Morris Hunt, oil on canvas, 1895

Richard Morris Hunt (born October 31, 1827 in Brattleboro , Vermont , † July 3, 1895 in Newport , Rhode Island ) was an American architect. He belongs to the Vermont family Hunt .

Life

The Tribune Building in New York City (circa 1900) on Newspaper Row near the Brooklyn Bridge . It is the central high-rise with a pointed tower. The New York World Building on the left had to give way to a ramp in 1955 and the Tribune Building to the new Pace University building in the 1960s . In front of it you can see the City Hall in City Hall Park.
Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt was the fourth of five children of Congressman Jonathan Hunt and his wife Maria Jane Leavitt. His mother came from an influential Connecticut family . After the early death of his father, he grew up with his siblings, including his older brother William , in Switzerland and France .

Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to study architecture , painting and sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris . After his return to New York City , he was soon considered the most prominent architect in the city. Early in his career, Hunt designed a number of avant-garde buildings that brought French architectural ideas to America. Hunt received several important commissions during his career, including the design of the first skyscraper , the Tribune Building (1876), the entrance wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1895-1902), the base for the Statue of Liberty (1881-1885) and the World Columbian Exposition Administration Building (1891-1893). He was the discoverer and patron of the Austrian sculptor Karl Bitter .

Richard Morris Hunt was married to Catherine Howland, on whose Hilltop Estate the couple lived. The marriage, which all reports said was a happy one, remained childless. He died of a heart attack . In Central Park , a landscape park in New York City, it was erected in honor of a monument. The responsible artist was the sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931).

Biltmore Estate in North Carolina

Building (selection)

  • 1870–1873 Stuyvesant Building in New York
  • 1873–1874 Roosevelt Building in New York
  • 1873–1876 New York Tribune Building in New York
  • 1879–1883 ​​Cornelius Vanderbilt II's mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York
  • 1893–1895 Cornelius Vanderbilt II's The Breakers in Newport
  • 1888-1892 William K. Vanderbilt's Marble House in Newport
  • 1888–1895 George Washington Vanderbilt II Biltmore Estate in Asheville

Honors

literature

  • Susan Stein: The Architecture of Richard Morris Hunt. University of Chicago Press, 1986, ISBN 0-226-77169-5 .
  • Paul R. Baker: Richard Morris Hunt. The MIT Press, 1986, ISBN 0-262-52109-1 .
  • John Foreman and Robbie Pierce Stimson: The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age: Architectural Aspirations, 1879–1901. St Martins Press, 1991, ISBN 0-312-05984-1 .
  • A. Lewis: American Country Houses of the Gilded Age (Sheldon's "Artistic Country Seats"). Dover Publications, 1982, ISBN 0-486-24301-X .
  • John Vredenburgh van Pelt: A monograph of the William K. Vanderbilt house: Richard Morris Hunt. JV van Pelt, 1925.

Web links

Commons : Richard Morris Hunt  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Hunt, Richard Morris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Brattleboro , Vermont
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1895
Place of death Newport , Rhode Island