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Richard Morris Hunt (October 31, 1827 – July 31, 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and an eminent figure in the history of architecture of the United States. He helped shape New York City with his designs for the 1902 entrance façade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue building, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), and many Fifth Avenue mansions since destroyed. Hunt is also renowned for his Biltmore Estate, America's largest private house, near Asheville, North Carolina, and for his elaborate summer cottages in Newport, Rhode Island, which set a new standard of ostentation for the social elite and the newly minted millionaires of the Gilded Age. Early life Hunt was born at Brattleboro, Vermont into the prominent Hunt family. His father, Jonathan Hunt, was a lawyer and U.S. congressman, whose own father, Jonathan Hunt, senior, was lieutenant governor of Vermont. Hunt's mother, Jane Maria Leavitt, was the daughter of Thaddeus Leavitt, Jr., a merchant, and a member of the influential Leavitt family of Suffield, Connecticut. Richard Morris Hunt was named for Lieut. Richard Morris, an officer in the U.S. Navy, a son of Hunt's aunt, whose husband Lewis Richard Morris was a U.S. Congressman from Vermont and the nephew of Gouverneur Morris, author of large parts of the U.S. Constitution. Hunt was the brother of the Boston painter William Morris Hunt, and the photographer and lawyer Leavitt Hunt. Following the death of his father in Washington, D.C. in 1832 at the age of 44, Hunt's mother moved her family to New Haven, then in 1837 to New York, and then in the spring of 1838 to Boston. There, Hunt enrolled in the Boston Latin School, while his brother William enrolled in Harvard College. However, in the summer of 1842, William left Harvard, transferring to a school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, while Richard was sent to school in Sandwich, Massachusetts. European education In October 1843, out of concern for William's health, Mrs. Hunt and her five children sailed from New York to Europe, eventually settling in Rome. There, Hunt studied art, but was encouraged by his mother and brother William to pursue architecture. In May 1844, Hunt enrolled in Mr. Briquet's boarding school in Geneva, and the following year, while continuing to board with Mr. Briquet, arranged to study with the Geneva architect Samuel Darier. In October 1846, Hunt entered the Paris atelier of the architect Hector Lefuel, while studying for the entrance examinations of the École des Beaux-Arts. According to the historian David McCullough, "Hunt was the first American to be admitted to the school of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts – the finest school of architecture in the world – and the subsequent importance of his influence on the architecture of his own country can hardly be overstated." In 1853, Hunt's mentor Lefuel was placed in charge of the ambitious project of completing the Louvre, following the death of the project's architect, Louis-Tullius-Joachim Visconti. Lefuel engaged Hunt to help supervise the work, and to help design the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque ("Library Pavilion"), prominently situated opposite the Palais-Royal. Hunt would later regale the sixteen-year-old future architect Louis Sullivan with stories of his work on the Nouveau Louvre in Lefuel's atelier libre. Career in America New York early years Hunt spent Christmas 1855 in Paris, after which he returned to the United States. In March 1856, he accepted a position with the architect Thomas Ustick Walter helping Walter with the renovation and expansion of the U.S. Capitol, and the following year moved to New York to establish his own practice. Hunt's first substantial project was the Tenth Street Studio Building, where he rented space, and where in 1858 he founded the first American architectural school, beginning with a small group of students, including George B. Post, William Robert Ware, Henry Van Brunt, and Frank Furness. Ware, who was deeply influenced by Hunt, went on to found America's first two university programs in architecture: at MIT in 1866, and at Columbia in 1881. Hunt's first New York project, a pair of houses on 37th Street for Thomas P. Rossiter and his father-in-law Dr. Eleazer Parmly, required Hunt to sue Parmly for non-payment of the supervisory portion of his services. The jury awarded Hunt a 2-1/2% commission, at the time the minimum fee typically charged by architects. According to the editors of Engineering Magazine, writing in 1896, the case, "helped to establish a uniform system of charges by percentage." It was in these early years that Hunt suffered his greatest professional setback, the rejection of his formal, classical proposal for the "Scholars' Gate", the entrance to New York's Central Park at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. According to Central Park historian Sarah Cedar Miller, the influential Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green supported Hunt's design, but when the park commissioners adopted it, the park's designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (advocates of a more informal design), protested and resigned their positions with the Central Park project. Hunt's plan was ultimately rejected, and Olmsted and Vaux rejoined the project. Nevertheless, one work of Hunt's can be found in the park, albeit a minor one: the rusticated Quincy granite pedestal on which John Quincy Adams Ward's bronze statue The Pilgrim stands, on Pilgrim Hill overlooking the park's East Drive at East 72nd Street. Hunt's extroverted personality, a factor in his successful career, is well-documented. After meeting Hunt in 1869 the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal of "one remarkable person new to me, Richard Hunt the architect. His conversation was spirited beyond any I remember, loaded with matter, and expressed with the vigour and fury of a member of the Harvard boat or ball club relating the adventures of one of their matches; inspired, meantime, throughout, with fine theories of the possibilities of art." Hunt was said to be popular with his workmen, and legend has it that during a final walk-through of the William K. Vanderbilt house on Fifth Avenue, Hunt discovered a mysterious tent-like object in one of the ballrooms. Investigating, he found it covering a life-sized statue of himself, dressed in stonecutters' clothes, carved in secret as a tribute by the project's stonecutters. Vanderbilt permitted the statue to be placed on the roof over the entrance to the house. Hunt was said to be pragmatic; his son Richard quoted him as having said, "the first thing you've got to remember is that it's your client's money you're spending. Your goal is to achieve the best results by following their wishes. If they want you to build a house upside down standing on its chimney, it's up to you to do it." Hunt's professional trajectory gained impetus from his extensive social connections at Newpo.... Discover the Richard Morris popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Richard Morris books.